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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 wi ...
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Ancient Greek
Ancient Greek (, ; ) includes the forms of the Greek language used in ancient Greece and the classical antiquity, ancient world from around 1500 BC to 300 BC. It is often roughly divided into the following periods: Mycenaean Greek (), Greek Dark Ages, Dark Ages (), the Archaic Greece, Archaic or Homeric Greek, Homeric period (), and the Classical Greece, Classical period (). Ancient Greek was the language of Homer and of fifth-century Athens, fifth-century Athenian historians, playwrights, and Ancient Greek philosophy, 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 Homeric Greek, Epic and Classical periods of the language, which are the best-attested periods and considered most typical of Ancient Greek. From the Hellenistic period (), Ancient Greek was followed by Koine Greek, which is regar ...
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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.. The Mycenaeans were mainland Greek peoples who were likely stimulated by their contact with insular Minoan Crete and other 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, and Midea in the Peloponnese, Orchomenos, Thebes, and Athens in Central Greece, and Iolcos in Thessaly. Mycenaean settlements also appeared in Epirus, Macedonia, on islands in the Aegean Sea, on the south-west coast of Asia Minor, and on Cyprus, while Mycenaean-influenced settlements appeared ...
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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 The Greek-language inscriptions and epigraphy are a major source for understanding of the society, language and history of ancient Greece and other Greek-speaking or Greek-controlled areas. Greek inscriptions may occur on stone slabs, pottery ostr ... 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 (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 ...
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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 (, '' katadesmos'') inscribed on a lead scroll, dated to the first half of the 4th century BC (BC). It is held in the Archaeological Museum of Pella. It was published in the ''Hellenic Dialectology'' Journal in 1993. The Pella curse tablet exhibits some of the typical Northwest Greek features, as well as a cluster of unique Doric features that do not appear in other subdialects of this family (e.g. Epirote, Locrian). It represents the same or a very similar vernacular dialect that is also attested in the other Doric inscriptions from Macedonia. This indicates that a Doric Greek dialect was not imported, but proper to Macedon. As a result, the Pella curse tablet has been forwarded as an argument that the Ancient Macedonian language was a dialect of Northwest Greek, and one of the Doric dialects. The spell was writ ...
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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 ent ...
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Ancient Macedonian Language
Ancient Macedonian was the language of the ancient Macedonians which was either a Ancient Greek dialects, dialect of Ancient Greek or a separate Hellenic languages, Hellenic language. It was spoken in the kingdom of Macedonia (ancient kingdom), Macedonia during the 1st millennium BC and belonged to the Indo-European languages, Indo-European language family. It gradually fell out of use during the 4th century BC, marginalized by the use of Attic Greek by the Macedonian aristocracy, the Ancient Greek dialect that became the basis of Koine Greek, the ''lingua franca'' of the Hellenistic period. It became Extinct language, extinct during either the Hellenistic or Roman imperial period (chronology), Roman imperial period, and was entirely replaced by Koine Greek. While the bulk of surviving public and private inscriptions found in ancient Macedonia were written in Attic Greek (and later in Koine Greek), fragmentary documentation of a vernacular local variety comes from Onomastics, on ...
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Asia Minor
Anatolia (), also known as Asia Minor, is a peninsula in West Asia that makes up the majority of the land area of Turkey. It is the westernmost protrusion of Asia and is geographically bounded by the Mediterranean Sea to the south, the Aegean Sea to the west, the Turkish Straits to the northwest, and the Black Sea to the north. The eastern and southeastern limits have been expanded either to the entirety of Asiatic Turkey or to an imprecise line from the Black Sea to the Gulf of Alexandretta. Topographically, the Sea of Marmara connects the Black Sea with the Aegean Sea through the Bosporus and the Dardanelles, and separates Anatolia from Thrace in Southeast Europe. During the Neolithic, Anatolia was an early centre for the development of farming after it originated in the adjacent Fertile Crescent. Beginning around 9,000 years ago, there was a major migration of Anatolian Neolithic Farmers into Neolithic Europe, Europe, with their descendants coming to dominate the continent a ...
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Crete
Crete ( ; , Modern Greek, Modern: , Ancient Greek, Ancient: ) is the largest and most populous of the Greek islands, the List of islands by area, 88th largest island in the world and the List of islands in the Mediterranean#By area, fifth largest island in the Mediterranean Sea, after Sicily, Sardinia, Cyprus, and Corsica. Crete is located about south of the Peloponnese, 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 covers 260 km from west to east but is narrow from north to south, spanning three longitudes but only half a latitude. Crete and a number of islands and islets that surround it constitute the Region of Crete (), which is the southernmost of the 13 Modern regions of Greece, top-level administrative units of Greece, and the fifth most popu ...
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Sparta
Sparta 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 in the Evrotas Valley, valley of Evrotas (river), Evrotas river in Laconia, in southeastern Peloponnese. Around 650 BC, it rose to become the dominant military land-power in ancient Greece. 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 Classical Athens, Athens. Sparta was the principal enemy of History of Athens, Athens during the Peloponnesian War (431–404 BC), from which it emerged victorious after the Battle of Aegospotami. The decisive Battle of Leuctra against Thebes, Greece, Thebes in 371 BC ended the Spartan hegemony, although the city-state maintained its Independence, political independence until its forced integration into the Achaean League in 192 BC. The city nevertheless recovered m ...
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Peloponnesus
The Peloponnese ( ), Peloponnesus ( ; , ) or Morea (; ) is a peninsula and geographic regions of Greece, geographic region in Southern Greece, and the southernmost region of the Balkans. 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, a name still in colloquial use in its demotic Greek, demotic form. The peninsula is divided among three administrative regions of Greece, administrative regions: most belongs to the Peloponnese (region), Peloponnese region, with smaller parts belonging to the West Greece and Attica (region), 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 18 ...
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Smyrna
Smyrna ( ; , or ) was an Ancient Greece, Ancient Greek city located at a strategic point on the Aegean Sea, Aegean coast of Anatolia, Turkey. Due to its advantageous port conditions, its ease of defence, and its good inland connections, Smyrna rose to prominence. Since about 1930, the city's name has been İzmir. Two sites of the ancient city are today within İzmir's boundaries. The first, probably founded by indigenous peoples, rose to prominence during the Archaic period in Greece, 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 ancient city's present-day remains date to the Roman era, the majority from after a 2nd-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 ...
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Lesbos Island
Lesbos or Lesvos ( ) 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 and the eighth largest in the Mediterranean. It is separated from Asia Minor by the narrow Mytilini Strait. On the southeastern coast is the island's capital and largest city, Mytilene (), whose name is also used for the island as a whole. Lesbos is a separate regional unit with the seat in Mytilene, which is also the capital of the larger North Aegean region. The region includes the islands of Lesbos, Chios, Ikaria, Lemnos, and Samos. The total population of the island was 83,755 in 2021. A third of the island's inhabitants live in the capital, while the remainder are concentrated in small towns and villages. The largest are Plomari, Agia Paraskevi, Polichnitos, Agiassos, Eresos, Gera, and Molyvos (the ancient Mythimna). According to later Greek writers, Mytilene was founded in the 11th centur ...
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