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Greeks
(Έλληνες)
File:GREEKS.JPG
Regions with significant populations
Greece:
   11,244,118 (2006 est)[1]

United States:
   1,213,807 (2000 Census); est. 3,000,000 claim Greek descent (State Department 2005)
Cyprus:
   689,471 (2001 Census, gov controlled area)
Australia:
   375,703 (2001 Census)
Germany:
   354,600 (2003) [2]
Canada:
   215,105 2001 Census
United Kingdom:
   200,000 (est)
Albania:
   62,500 (1989 census)
Russia:
   98,000 2002 census
Ukraine:
   92,000 [3]
South Africa
   50,000 (2002 est)
Italy
   20,000 [4]
Georgia:
   15,500 (2002 Census)
Kazakhstan
  13,000 1999 census
Uzbekistan:
   9,500[5]
Romania
   4,146 (2002 census)
Turkey:
   4,000 (1993) [6]

Mexico:
   1,000 (2001 est)[7]
Languages
Greek
Religion
Predominantly Greek Orthodox, with Roman Catholic, Protestant, Muslim and Atheist minorities.

The Greeks (Greek: Έλληνες – 'Hellenes') are a nation in the meaning an ethnos (έθνος in Greek), defined more by a sense of sharing a common Greek culture and having a Greek mother tongue, than by citizenship, religion or by being subjects to any particular country. The word 'Greek' also has a wider meaning – because, especially in the past, it referred to all Eastern Orthodox Christian inhabitants of the Ottoman Empire – the millet-i Rum (Ottoman Turkish: ميلتي روم) – irrespective of their ethnicity.

Ethnic Greeks have primarily populated the southern Balkans, Anatolia and Cyprus for some 3500 years. Until the early 20th century, Greeks were uniformly distributed between the Greek peninsula, the western coast of Asia Minor, Pontus and Constantinople, regions which coincided to a very large extent with the borders of the Byzantine Empire of the 11th century and the areas of Greek colonization in the ancient world. In the aftermath of the Greco-Turkish War (1919-1922) in 1923, a large-scale population exchange between Greece and Turkey transferred and confined ethnic Greeks almost entirely into the borders of the modern Greek state, that is, in areas where groups of Greek-speaking Indo-Europeans first established themselves about 1500 BC. Other ethnic Greek populations can be found from Southern Italy to the Caucasus and diaspora communities in a number of other countries.

Identity of the Greek people

The Greek language has been spoken in the Greek peninsula (i.e. the southern Balkans) for over 3500 years (and in western Asia Minor for a little less) [1], and has an unbroken literary history which makes it one of the oldest surviving branches of the Indo-European family of languages. From ancient Greece the Greeks have inherited a sophisticated culture and a language that has been documented for almost three millennia [2]. Modern Greek is recognizably the same as the language of Athens under Pericles in the 5th century BC. Few languages can demonstrate such continuity.

The definition of Greekness has varied through history, but by modern standards, the term "Greeks" has traditionally referred to any native speakers of the Greek language (whether Mycenaean, Byzantine or modern Greeks). Byzantine Greeks valued the classical tradition and considered themselves the Orthodox heirs of ancient Greece and Rome. The use of the older self-descriptive ethnic term "Hellenes" revived during the era of the neo-platonic philosopher Gemistus Pletho and the work of Cyriac of Ancona. 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 20th century that its popular use was firmly re-established.

Greece became the first country in the Balkans to come into being, both as a nation-state and breaking away from the Ottoman Empire. The Greek revolutionary movement formed its own definition of Greekness out of the Byzantine and ancient Greek cultural heritage along with the influences of western nationalism. This attracted foreign support from the Philhellenes.

Mycenaean and Minoan Greeks

The Mycenaean and Minoan proto-Greeks were the first peoples to arrive in the area now referred to as 'Greece' (the southern tip of the Balkan peninsula) and the first peoples we can consider to be 'Greek' as an ethnic identity. There are clear elements of cultural continuity through the Greek Dark Ages (1200 BC - 800 BC), until the advent of Classical Greece (800 BC onwards) and the rise of the Polis and in particular Athens. For example, in Homer's epic poems The Illiad and the Odyssey - which describe the epic Battle of Troy, it is quite clear that he views the Greeks of Prehistory as the forefathers of the early Classical Civilization he inhabited, the likes of Achilles and Odysseus were viewed as Athenians as well as others as prime-examples of the ideal citizen of a Polis, in much the same way Aeneas would become the ideal citizen of Rome in Virgil's Aeneid.

This element of self-identification on its own clearly constitutes cultural continuity, but there are other elements as well that solidify this idea - The First being that Mycenaenean Architecture echoes influence from other civilizations around the basin, as well as the Mycenaeans' own particular style (owing as much as to limitations of the Geography of the area (see: Geography of Greece), that would eventually lead to the formation of Classical Greek Architecture and Hellenistic Architecture, for example, the ruins of the columns at Knossos echoing a very archaic version of the Doric style of Architecture so widely used in the Classical period.

Religion is another factor, with the Mycenaeans own pantheon of gods mirroring in many ways the pantheon of that of the Classical Greeks, this influence defined not only culture but part of Classical Greece's value system as well as their Art. There is also clear linguistical continuity between the language of Proto-Greek and the various dialects of Classical Greece. In particular, the Linear B script is clearly an archaic form of the latter Koine Greek script.

These elements combined together do not amount to say, the same cultural output and continuity that Modern Greeks feel with Classical, Hellenistic and Byzantine periods of Greek History, but they neverthelesss constitute the beginnings of the Greek identity, and the foundation, albeit in comparison to 5th Century Athens a basic one, of Greece's Pagan religion, language, architecture and art.

Classical and Hellenistic

File:Ac.thebeskouros.jpg
Kouros of the Archaic period, Thebes Archaeological Museum

Herodotus states 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:

As Thucydides observes that the name of Hellas spread from a valley in Thessaly to the Greek-speaking peoples after the formation of the text of Homer (the Panellenes of Il. 2.530 are the troops of Thessaly, contrasting with the Achaeans), not long before his own time. This places the idea in the Archaic period, when Greeks discovered that the world was wider, wealthier, and more cultured than they had imagined. Homer's Trojan War is, indeed, a conflict among Greeks: the Trojans speak Greek (although most modern historians believe they were more likely an Anatolian people), bear Greek names, and worship the Greek gods; and Priam is descended from Zeus (see Alaksandus). The Carians are the only people Homer considers barbarophonoi.

Nor did the late and schematic myth of the sons of Hellen ever convince other mythographers to comply with it. Theseus is descended from Erechtheus, son of the Earth; Agamemnon from Phrygian Pelops; Heracles and Perseus from Egyptian Danaus (Heracles may also descended from Epaphus). Whole cities were not descended from Hellen: Athens, Lemnos, and the Cretans were Pelasgian. The myth of Hellen combined into one group the smaller tribes that participated in the Delphic Amphictyon, such as the Aeolians, the Achaeans, and the Dorians. Traces of the older distinctions remained; Dorians were forbidden in the Parthenon; although the Spartan king Cleomenes I claimed this did not apply to him — as a descendant of Heracles, he was an Achaean. As in this example, the Greeks almost always reckoned descent through the male line.

So the exact nature of Greek identity has been an open question since ancient times. It has not become clearer with time: descent is at best a matter of tradition, and the Greeks have altered their language, religion, and customs since Herodotus. Nevertheless, there has been, in practice, a continuous Greek identity since ancient times, containing at least those who were born Greek and who had citizenship in a Greek city, or membership of a Greek community.

As early as the 5th century BC, Isocrates, after speaking of common origin and worship, says: "the name Hellenes suggests no longer a race but an intelligence, and... the title Hellenes is applied rather to those who share our culture than to those who share a common blood". Panegyric 4.50.

After the 4th century BC and Alexander the Great's conquest of the East, Greek became the lingua franca of the East Mediterranean region and was widely spoken by educated non-Greeks.

Byzantine Greeks

The 11th-century Trebizond Gospel was commissioned by the Komnenoi family of Byzantine emperors.

After the creation of the Byzantine Empire, Greek culture changed from Hellenic (Greek pagan) to Eastern Roman (Greek paganism fused with Christianity), and the word "Hellene" became associated with the pagan past. Distinctions of nationality still existed in the empire, but became secondary to religious considerations as the renewed empire used Christianity to maintain its cohesion. However, the Byzantine Empire was dominated by the Greek element to such an extent that Emperor Heraclius (575-641AD) decided to make Greek the official language. From then on, the Roman and Greek cultures were virtually fused in the East. Thanks to the settlements that resulted from such policies, many names that seem Greek are actually of different ethnic origin, such as Slavic or Turkish. By that time it was common policy by the Latin West to refer to Byzantium strictly as "Empire of the Greeks" (Imperium Graecorum), or even "Greece" (Graecia).

Nonetheless, it was religion that divided the Empire from the Muslims; and, along different lines, it came to divide the Empire from the Franks, Armenians, Copts, and Syrians.

Pure Greek nationalism re-emerged in the 11th century within specific circles and became more forcefull 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 essentially a Greek national state. Adherence to Greek Orthodox rites and the Greek language, became the defining characteristic of the Greek people.

Greeks in the Ottoman Empire

Under the Ottoman Empire, religion was the defining characteristic of "national" groups (milletler), so "Greeks" (Rumlar) were defined by the Ottomans as members of the Greek Orthodox Church, regardless of their language or origin. Conversely, those who adopted Islam during that period were considered 'Turks', regardless of their language or origin. Thus Alexander Ypsilanti expected the Moldavians and Wallachians, being Greek Orthodox, to rise for Greek independence; but they did not.

Manto Mavrogenous

Modern independence

This strong relation between Greek national identity and Greek Orthodox religion continued after the creation of the modern Greek state in 1830, and 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. However, 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 the second state in Europe (after France) 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.

Names used for the Greek people

Main Article: Names of the Greeks.

Family group on a grave marker from Athens, National Archaeological Museum, Athens
Greek heroine Laskarina Bouboulina.

Throughout the centuries, the Greeks have been known by a number of names, including:

  • Hellenes (Έλληνες) - In mythology, Hellen, son of Deucalion and Pyrrha, received from the nymph Orseis three sons, Aeolus, Dorus and Xuthus, each of which founded a primary tribe of Hellas; Aeolians, Dorians, Achaeans and Ionians. Originally, only a small tribe in Thessaly were called Hellenes, but the word soon extended to the rest of the peninsula and came to represent all Greek people. In early Christian times it was sometimes used to mean "pagans". It remains in Greece today, the primary national name.
  • Greeks (Γραικοί) - In mythology, Graecus was the brother of Latinus and nephew to Hellen. It was the name of a Boeotian tribe that migrated to the Italian peninsula in the 8th century BC and probably through contact with natives there brought the term to represent all Hellenes, which then established itself in Italy and in the West in general.
  • Romioi (Ρωμιοί) - Romans is the political name by which the Byzantine Greeks called themselves during Late Antiquity and the Middle Ages. In parts of mainland Greece and Asia Minor, the use of this name survived well in the 20th century. The name in antiquity signified the inhabitants of the city of Rome in Italy, but with the elevation of the Greeks in the Roman Empire, it soon lost its connection with the Latins and acquired a completely different definition. Roman Emperor Caracalla with his Constitutio Antoniniana (212) granted all free people in the Roman Empire citizenship. The term Roman (Romaios) represented for the Greeks their Roman citizenship and their Hellenic ancestry. The word Romaioi came to represent the Greek inhabitants of the Byzantine Empire. It remains still in use today in Greece, being the most popular national name after Hellene and in Turkey to signify the Greek Orthodox minority. It is found also in the religious book of the Moslems, alcoran. One Sura is entitled 'Ar-Rum' meaning the eastern Romans, Byzantines, or the Greeks.
  • Achaeans, Argives, and Danaans are names used interchangeably by Homer, to signify the Greek allied forces.
  • Yavan (Ίωνες) or 'Yunan', the name 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 from the Persians, who in contact with the Ionian tribes in western Asia Minor in the 6th century BC, extended the name to all Hellenes.

History of the Greeks

The history of the Greek people is closely associated with the history of Greece, 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.

Modern and ancient Greeks

The most obvious link between modern and ancient Greeks is the Greek language, which has enjoyed a continuous tradition at least from the 7th century BC to the present day. There has been no break such as the one between Latin and the modern Romance languages, and the only other language which enjoys comparable continuity of tradition is Chinese [3]. Many Greeks (and Philhellenes) believe that there is a strong genetic connection to the ancient Greeks, and there are those, for example Jakob Philipp Fallmerayer, who believe that the ancient Greeks genetically disappeared at some point, and therefore the modern Greeks have no genetic connection to them.

Modern ethnologists consider genetics irrelevant, but agree that there is a strong and continuous tradition linking ancient and modern Greeks linguistically and culturally over the millennia, though, of course, there have also been significant contributions to Greek language and culture from other peoples.

Culture

Language

Greeks speak the Greek language, an Indo-European language which forms a branch in itself, although seems to be more closely related to Armenian. Greek literature has a continuous history of nearly 3000 years, and has been written in the Greek alphabet since the 9th century BC.

Greek demonstrates several linguistic features that are shared with Romanian, Albanian and Bulgarian (see Balkan sprachbund), and has absorbed numerous foreign words (primarily of western European or Turkish origin). Due to the movement of Philhellenism in the 19th century in the rest of Europe, which emphasized the modern Greeks' ancient heritage, these foreign influences were excluded from official use via the usage of Katharevusa, 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 Greek parliament voted to make Dhimotiki, the modern dialect of Athens, the official language, making Katharevusa obsolete.

Some members of the Greek diaspora can not speak the Bulgarian language, but are still considered Bulgarians by ethnic origin or descent.

Greek has a wide variety of dialects of varying levels of mutual intelligibility, which in addition to official variety (Standard Modern Greek - Κοινή Νεοελληνική), include the Cypriot, Pontic, Cappadocian, Griko (Calabrian Greek) and Tsakonian (the main surviving representative of ancient Doric Greek) varieties. Yevanic, also known as Romaniote or Judæo-Greek, is the language of the Greek Jews (Romaniotes), and survives in small communities in Greece, New York and Israel.

In addition to Greek, many Greeks are bilingual in other languages. Such languages include Arvanitic, Aromanian (also known Vlach), Slavic (also known as Dopia), Russian, Italian, Turkish and Romany.

Religion

The vast majority of Greeks are Eastern Orthodox Christians, belonging to the Greek Orthodox Church. There are also small groups adhering to other Christian denominations or religions. The main non-Orthodox Christian denomination are Roman Catholics, and more recently Evangelicals, Seventh Day Adventists, Methodists, and Christian Jehovah's Witnesses. Since the days of the Ottoman Empire, there has been a Muslim minority within Greek society, and for much of its history, Greece has had a substantial Jewish community.

See also:

Symbols

The Greek flag

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 "Έλευθερία ή Θάνατος" ("Liberty or Death"), which was also the motto of the Greek War of Independence. The blue square in the upper hoist-side corner bearing a white cross; the cross represents Greek Orthodoxy. The Greek flag is also widely used by the Greek community in Cyprus (which has officially adopted a neutral flag so as to ease ethnic tensions with the Turkish minority – see flag of Cyprus), and by the Greek minority in Albania, which has lead to ethnic clashes with the ethnic Albanian majority.

File:Palaeologus-flag.png
The double-headed eagle flag

Another highly recognizable and beloved Greek symbol is the double-headed eagle, which is not currently part of the modern Greek flag or coat of arms, although it is officially used by the Greek Army and by the Church of Greece, and was incorporated in the Greek coat of arms between 1925 and 1926.

Greeks around the world

Main article: Greek diaspora

Apart from Greece and Cyprus, large Greek communities can be found in a number of countries:

Significant Greek communities can also be found in: Argentina (c.30,000), Austria (c.12,000[[9]]), Italy (c.50.000 in "Grecia Salentina" speaking a Greco-italian dialect called Griko), Belgium (c.25,000), Brazil (c.25,000), Egypt (c.42,000[[10]]), France (c.20,000), Hungary (c.5,000), Kazakhstan (c.12,000), Mexico (c.1,000), Netherlands (c.4.000), New Zealand (c.4,500), Romania (c.6,500), Sweden (c.50,000[[11]]), Switzerland (c.11,000), South Africa (c.50,000), Turkey (2.000 Christian Orthodox in Istanbul), Uzbekistan (c.9,000) and Zambia (c.1,000).

Timeline of Greek migrations

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.

Other languages

Turkish:

  • Yunan (from the ancient Persian 'Yauna', from the Greek 'Ionian'), derives from Ionian Greeks established in Bactria.
  • "Rum" (from the Greek "Romaioi"), one of the self-descriptive ethnic terms of the Byzantine and modern Greeks.

Footnotes

1In Greek: homoglosson ( ὁμόγλωσσον)

2In Greek: homaimon ( ὅμαιμον)

3Compare the Christian Greek and Demotic term omothriskon ( ὁμόθρησκον).

4Includes non-Greeks born in Greece; excludes Greeks not born in Greece; excludes second-generation Greek-Canadians.

Miscellaneous topics

Bibliography

  • Peter Mackridge, Eleni Yannakakis, eds., Ourselves and Others : The Development of a Greek Macedonian Cultural Identity since 1912, 1997, ISBN 1859731333.
  • Peter Bien, "Inventing Greece", Journal of Modern Greek Studies 23:2 (October 2005), pp. 217-234.
  • Michael Herzfeld, Ours Once More: Folklore, Ideology, and the making of Modern Greece, 1982, ISBN 918618320.
  • 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.
  • Stephen Xydis, "Medieval Origins of Modern Greek Nationalism", Balkan Studies, 9 (1968), 1-20.

Footnotes

  1. ^ World Book 2005, "Greece"
  2. ^ Encyclopædia Britannica 2006, "History of Greece"
  3. ^ Browning, R. Medieval and Modern Greek, Cambridge University Press, 1983. ISBN 0521234883

Names of the Greeks: article on the history of the national names of the Greek (this is not an article about the history of the Greeks)

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