Hellenization
Hellenization (
Etymology
The first known use of a verb that means "to Hellenise" was in Greek (ἑλληνίζειν) and by
Background
Historical
By the 4th century BC, the process of Hellenisation had started in southwestern Anatolia's
When it was advantageous to do so, places like
The Seuthopolis inscription was very influential in the modern study of Thrace. The inscription mentions Dionysus, Apollo and some Samothracian gods. Scholars have interpreted the inscription as evidence of Hellenisation in inland Thrace during the early Hellenistic, but this has been challenged by recent scholarship.[8][9]
However, Hellenisation had its limitations. For example, areas of southern Syria that were affected by Greek culture mostly entailed Seleucid urban centres, where Greek was commonly spoken. The countryside, on the other hand, was largely unaffected, with most of its inhabitants speaking Syriac and clinging to their native traditions.[10]
By itself, archaeological evidence only gives researchers an incomplete picture of Hellenisation; it is often not possible to state with certainty whether particular archaeological findings belonged to Greeks, Hellenised indigenous peoples, indigenous people who simply owned Greek-style objects or some combination of these groups. Thus, literary sources are also used to help researchers interpret archaeological findings.[11]
Modern
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Regions
Anatolia
Greek cultural influence spread into Anatolia in a slow rate from the 6th to 4th century. The Lydians had been particularly receptive to Greek culture, as were the 4th century dynasties of Caria and Lycia as well as the inhabitants of the Cicilian plain and of the regions of Paphlagonia. The local population found their desires for advancement a stimulus to learn Greek. The indigenous urban settlements and villages in Anatolia coalesced, on their own initiative, to form cities in the Greek manner. The local kings of Asia Minor adopted Greek as their official language and sought to imitate other Greek cultural forms.[12]
Worship of the Greek pantheon of gods was practised in Lydia. Lydian king Croesus often invited the wisest Greek philosophers, orators and statesmen to attend his court. Croesus himself often consulted the famous oracle at Delphi-bestowing many gifts and offerings to this and other religious sites for example. He provided patronage for the reconstruction of the Temple of Artemis, to which he offered a large number of marble columns as dedication to the goddess.[13][14]
It was in the towns that Hellenisation made its greatest progress, with the process often being synonymous with urbanisation.
Crimea
Judea
The Hellenistic
Hellenisation of members of the Jewish elite included names and clothes, but other customs were adapted by the rabbis, and elements that violated the
Parthia
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Pisidia and Pamphylia
Pamphylia is a plain located between the
For centuries the indigenous population exerted considerable influence on Greek settlers, but after the 4th century BC this population quickly started to become Hellenised.[17] Very little is known about Pisidia prior to the 3rd century BC, but there is quite a bit of archeological evidence that dates to the Hellenistic period.[25] Literary evidence, however, including inscriptions and coins are limited.[17] During the 3rd and 2nd centuries BC, native regional tongues were abandoned in favour of koine Greek and settlements began to take on characteristics of Greek polis.[17][25]
The
According to the writings of
Phrygia
The latest dateable coins found at the Phrygian capital of Gordion are from the 2nd century BC. Finds from the abandoned Hellenistic era settlement include imported and locally produced imitation Greek-style terracotta figurines and ceramics. Inscriptions show that some of the inhabitants had Greek names, while others had Anatolian or possibly Celtic names.[26] Many
Syria
Greek art and culture reached Phoenicia by way of commerce before any Greek cities were founded in Syria.[28] but Hellenisation of Syrians was not widespread until it became a Roman province. Under Roman rule in the 1st century BC there is evidence of Hellenistic style funerary architecture, decorative elements, mythological references, and inscriptions. However, there is a lack of evidence from Hellenistic Syria; concerning this, most scholars view it as a case of "absence of evidence is not evidence of absence".[29][30]
Bactria
The
Early Christianity
The
The twentieth century witnessed a lively debate over the extent of Hellenisation in the Levant, particularly among the ancient Jews, which has continued until today. Interpretations on the rise of Early Christianity, which was applied most famously by Rudolf Bultmann, used to see Judaism as largely unaffected by Hellenism, and the Judaism of the diaspora was thought to have succumbed thoroughly to its influences. Bultmann thus argued that Christianity arose almost completely within those Hellenistic confines and should be read against that background, as opposed to a more traditional Jewish background. With the publication of Martin Hengel's two-volume study Hellenism and Judaism (1974, German original 1972) and subsequent studies Jews, Greeks and Barbarians: Aspects of the Hellenisation of Judaism in the pre-Christian Period (1980, German original 1976) and The 'Hellenisation' of Judaea in the First Century after Christ (1989, German original 1989), the tide began to turn decisively. Hengel argued that virtually all of Judaism was highly Hellenised well before the beginning of the Christian era, and even the Greek language was well known throughout the cities and even the smaller towns of Jewish Palestine. Scholars have continued to nuance Hengel's views, but almost all believe that strong Hellenistic influences were throughout the Levant, even among the conservative Jewish communities, which were the most nationalistic.
In his introduction to the 1964 book Meditations, Anglican priest Maxwell Staniforth discussed the profound influence of Stoic philosophy on Christianity:
Again in the doctrine of the Trinity, the ecclesiastical conception of Father, Word, and Spirit finds its germ in the different Stoic names of the Divine Unity. Thus Seneca, writing of the supreme Power which shapes the universe, states, 'This Power we sometimes call the All-ruling God, sometimes the incorporeal Wisdom, sometimes the holy Spirit, sometimes Destiny.' The Church had only to reject the last of these terms to arrive at its own acceptable definition of the Divine Nature; while the further assertion 'these three are One', which the modern mind finds paradoxical, was no more than commonplace to those familiar with Stoic notions.[31]
Eastern Roman Empire
The
Modern times
In 1909, a commission appointed by the Greek government reported that a third of the villages of Greece should have their names changed, often because of their non-Greek origin.[33] In other instances, names were changed from a contemporary name of Greek origin to the ancient Greek name. Some village names were formed from a Greek root word with a foreign suffix or vice versa. Most of the name changes took place in areas populated by ethnic Greeks in which a stratum of foreign or divergent toponyms had accumulated over the centuries. However, in some parts of northern Greece, the population was not Greek-speaking, and many of the former toponyms had reflected the diverse ethnic and linguistic origins of their inhabitants.
The process of the change of toponyms in modern Greece has been described as a process of Hellenisation.[33] A modern use is in connection with policies pursuing "cultural harmonization and education of the linguistic minorities resident within the modern Greek state" - the Hellenisation of minority groups in modern Greece.[34] The term Hellenisation (or Hellenization) is also used in the context of Greek opposition to the use of the Slavic dialects of Greece.[35]
In 1870, the Greek government abolished all Italian schools in the
Arvanites
Arvanites are descendants of
There are no monolingual Arvanitika-speakers, as all are today bilingual in Greek. However, while Arvanites are bilingual in Greek and Arvanitika, Arvanitika is considered an endangered language as it is in a state of attrition due to the large-scale language shift towards Greek among the descendants of Arvanitika-speakers in recent decades, becoming monolingual Greek speakers in the end,[45] and since Arvanitika is almost exclusively a spoken language, Arvanites also no longer have practical affiliation with the Standard Albanian language used in Albania, as they do not use this form in writing or in media.
See also
- Aromanians
- Byzantine Greeks
- Byzantine Empire
- Culture of Greece
- Dehellenization of Christianity
- Greek nationalism
- Greek Orthodox Church
- Hellenistic philosophy
- Hellenistic philosophy and Christianity
- Hellenization in the Byzantine Empire
- Hellenocentrism
- History of Greece
- Koine Greek, the language of the New Testament
- Mixobarbaroi
- Philhellenism, particularly from the mid-19th century
References
Citations
- ^ a b c d Hornblower 2014, p. 359.
- ^ 2 Maccabees 4:13
- ^ Acts 6:1,Acts 9:29
- ^ Mitchell 1993, p. 85.
- ^ Hornblower 1991, p. 71.
- ^ Hornblower 2014, p. 360.
- ^ Patterson 2010, p. 65.
- S2CID 194889877.
- ^ Nankov, Emil (2012). "Beyond Hellenization: Reconsidering Greek Literacy in the Thracian City of Seuthopolis". Vasilka Gerasimova-Tomova in memoriam. Sofija: Nacionalen Archeologičeski Inst. s Muzej. pp. 109–126. Retrieved 29 July 2018.
- ^ Boyce & Grenet 1975, p. 353: "South Syria was thus a comparatively late addition to the Seleucid empire, whose heartland was North Syria. Here Seleucus himself created four cities—his capital of Antiochia-on-the-Orontes, and Apamea, Seleucia and Laodicia—all new foundations with a European citizen body. Twelve other Hellenistic cities are known there, and the Seleucid army was largely based in this region, either garrisoning its towns or settled as reservists in military colonies. Hellenisation, although intensive, seems in the main to have been confined to these urban centers, where Greek was commonly spoken. The country people appear to have been little affected by the cultural change, and continued to speak Syriac and to follow their traditional ways. Despite its political importance, little is known of Syria under Macedonian rule, and even the process of Hellenisation is mainly to be traced in the one community which has preserved some records from this time, namely the Jews of South Syria."
- ^ Boardman & Hammond 1982, pp. 91–92.
- ISBN 978-1-59740-476-1.
- ^ "La Lydie d'Alyatte et Crésus" (PDF). orbi.uliege.be (in French). Retrieved 6 March 2023.
- ISBN 978-1-78346-910-9.
- ISBN 978-1-59740-476-1.
- ^ Hornblower 2014, p. 94.
- ^ a b c d e f g Mitchell 1991, pp. 119–145.
- ^ Boardman & Hammond 1982, pp. 129–130.
- ^ Tsetskhladze 2010.
- ^ Martin 2012, p. Palestine lay on the border separating these two kingdoms and therefore was a constant bone of contention, passing sometimes into Seleucid and at other times into Ptolemaic control..
- ^ Martin 2012, pp. 55–66.
- ^ Shimoff 1996, pp. 440–452.
- ^ a b c d e Wilson 2013, p. 532.
- ^ ISBN 978-0-300-14042-2.
- ^ a b c d Mitchell & Vandeput 2013, pp. 97–118.
- ^ ISBN 978-1-934536-24-7.
- ^ Roller 2011.
- ^ Jones 1940, p. 1.
- ^ Jong 2017, p. 199.
- SSRN 1426969.
- ISBN 978-0-140-44140-6.
- ^ Stouraitis 2014, pp. 176, 177, Stouraitis 2017, p. 70, Kaldellis 2007, p. 113.
- ^ a b Zacharia 2008, p. 232.
- ^ Koliopoulos & Veremis 2002, pp. 232–241.
- ISBN 978-1-56432-132-9.
- ^ Giulio 2000, p. 132.
- ISBN 978-0-521-78999-8.
- ISBN 978-1-904303-37-4.
- ^ Trudgill/Tzavaras (1977).
- ^ "GHM 1995". greekhelsinki.gr. Archived from the original on 3 October 2016. Retrieved 6 March 2017.
- ^ a b Heraclides, Alexis (2011). The essence of the Greek-Turkish rivalry: national narrative and identity. Academic Paper. The London School of Economics and Political Science. p. 15. "On the Greek side, a case in point is the atrocious onslaught of the Greeks and Hellenised Christian Albanians against the city of Tripolitza in October 1821, which is justified by the Greeks ever since as the almost natural and predictable outcome of more than ‘400 years of slavery and dudgeon’. All the other similar atrocious acts all over Peloponnese, where apparently the whole population of Muslims (Albanian and Turkish-speakers), well over twenty thousand vanished from the face of the earth within a spat of a few months in 1821 is unsaid and forgotten, a case of ethnic cleansing through sheer slaughter (St Clair 2008: 1–9, 41–46) as are the atrocities committed in Moldavia (were the "Greek Revolution" actually started in February 1821) by prince Ypsilantis."
- ^ a b Andromedas, John N. (1976). "Maniot folk culture and the ethnic mosaic in the southeast Peloponnese". Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences. 268. (1): 200. "In 1821, then, the ethnic mosaic of the southeastern Peloponnese (the ancient Laconia and Cynouria) consisted of Christian Tsakonians and Albanians on the east, Christian Maniats and Barduniotes, and Moslem Albanian Barduniotes in the southwest, and an ordinary Greek Christian population running between them. In 1821, with a general Greek uprising impending, rumors of a "Russo-Frankish" naval bombardment caused the "Turkish" population of the southeastern Peloponnese to seek refuge in the fortresses of Monevasia, Mystra, and Tripolitza. Indeed, the Turkobarduniotes were so panic stricken that they stampeded the Moslems of Mystra along with them into headlong flight to Tripolitza. The origin of this rumor was the firing of a salute by a sea captain named Frangias in honor of a Maniat leader known as "the Russian Knight." Some Moslems in Bardunia,’ and elsewhere, remained as converts to Christianity. Thus almost overnight the whole of the southeastern Peloponnese was cleared of "Turks" of whatever linguistic affiliation. This situation was sealed by the ultimate success of the Greek War for Independence. The Christian Albanians, identifying with their Orthodox coreligionists and with the new nationstate, gradually gave up the Albanian language, in some instances deliberately deciding not to pass it on to their children."
- ^ Lawrence, Christopher (2007). Blood and oranges: Immigrant labor and European markets in rural Greece. Berghahn Books. pp. 85–86. "I did collect evidence that in the early years of Albanian immigration, the late 1980s, immigrants were greeted with hospitality in the upper villages. This initial friendliness seems to have been based on villagers’ feelings of solidarity with Albanians. Being both leftists and Arvanites, and speaking in fact a dialect of Albanian that was somewhat intelligible to the new migrants, many villagers had long felt a common bond with Albania."
- ^ Adrian Ahmedaja (2004). "On the question of methods for studying ethnic minorities' music in the case of Greece's Arvanites and Alvanoi." In Ursula Hemetek (ed.). Manifold Identities: Studies on Music and Minorities. Cambridge Scholars Press. p. 60. "That although the Albanians in Northwest Greece are nowadays orthodox, the Arvanites still seem to distrust them because of religious matters."
- ^ Salminen (1993) lists it as "seriously endangered" in the Unesco Red Book of Endangered Languages. ([1]). See also Sasse (1992) and Tsitsipis (1981).
Sources
- Boardman, John; Hammond, N. G. L. (1982). The Cambridge Ancient History. Vol. 3, Part 3: The Expansion of the Greek World, Eighth to Sixth Centuries BC. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 978-0-521-23447-4.
- Boyce, Mary; Grenet, Frantz (1975). A History of Zoroastrianism. Vol. 3: Zoroastrianism under Macedonian and Roman Rule. Brill. ISBN 978-90-04-09271-6.
- Giulio, Vignoli (2000). Gli Italiani Dimenticati: Minoranze Italiane in Europa (Saggi e Interventi) (in Italian). Milan: A. Giuffrè Editore. ISBN 978-8-81-408145-3.
- Hornblower, Simon (1991). A Commentary on Thucydides. Vol. II: Books IV-V. 24. OUP Oxford. ISBN 978-0-19-927625-7.
- Hornblower, Simon (2014). "Hellenism, Hellenization". The Oxford Companion to Classical Civilization. Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0-19-870677-9.
- Jones, A. H. M. (1940). The Greek City From Alexander To Justinian. Retrieved 29 July 2018.
- Jong, Lidewijde de (2017). The Archaeology of Death in Roman Syria: Burial, Commemoration, and Empire. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 978-1-108-21072-0.
- ISBN 978-0-511-49635-6.
- Koliopoulos, John S.; Veremis, Thanos M. (2002). Greece: The Modern Sequel: From 1831 to the Present. New York University Press. ISBN 978-0-8147-4767-4.
- Martin, Dale B. (24 April 2012). "4. Ancient Judaism". New Testament History and Literature. Yale University Press. pp. 55–66. ISBN 978-0-300-18219-4.
- Mitchell, Stephen (1991). "The Hellenization of Pisidia". Mediterranean Archaeology: 119–145.
- Mitchell, Stephen (1993). Anatolia: Land, Men, and Gods in Asia Minor. Clarendon Press.
- Mitchell, Stephen; Vandeput, Lutgarde (2013). "Sagalassos and the Pisidia Survey Project: In Search of Pisidia's History". Exempli Gratia: Sagalassos, Marc Waelkens and Interdisciplinary Archaeology. Leuven University Press. pp. 97–118. JSTOR j.ctt9qf02b.
- Patterson, Lee E. (15 December 2010). Kinship Myth in Ancient Greece. University of Texas Press. ISBN 978-0-292-73959-8.
- Roller, Lynn E. (2011). "Phrygian and the Phrygians". In McMahon, Gregory; Steadman, Sharon (eds.). The Oxford Handbook of Ancient Anatolia. Vol. 1. pp. 560–578. .
- Shimoff, Sandra R. (1996). "Banquets: the Limits of Hellenization". Journal for the Study of Judaism. 27 (4): 440–452. .
- Stouraitis, Ioannis (August 2014). "Roman identity in Byzantium: a critical approach". Byzantinische Zeitschrift. 107 (1). .
- Stouraitis, Yannis (July 2017). "Reinventing Roman Ethnicity in High and Late Medieval Byzantium". Medieval Worlds (5): 70–94. .
- Tsetskhladze, Gocha R. (2010). "Bosporus, Kingdom of". The Oxford Encyclopedia of Ancient Greece and Rome. Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0-19-517072-6. Retrieved 29 July 2018.
- Wilson, Nigel (31 October 2013). Encyclopedia of Ancient Greece. Routledge. ISBN 978-1-136-78800-0.
- Zacharia, Katerina (2008). Hellenisms: Culture, Identity, and Ethnicity from Antiquity to Modernity. Ashgate Publishing, Limited. ISBN 978-0-7546-6525-0.
Further reading
- Athanassakis, Apostolos N. (1977). "N.G.L. Hammond, Migrations and Invasions in Greece and Adjacent Areas (review)". American Journal of Philology. 99 (2): 263–266. JSTOR 293653.
- Daskalov, Roumen; Vezenkov, Alexander (13 March 2015). Entangled Histories of the Balkans. Vol. III: Shared Pasts, Disputed Legacies. Brill. ISBN 978-90-04-29036-5.
- ISBN 978-0-521-01176-1.
- Hammond, Nicholas Geoffrey Lemprière (1976). Migrations and Invasions in Greece and Adjacent Areas. Noyes Press. ISBN 978-0-8155-5047-1.
- Isaac, Benjamin H. (2004). The Invention of Racism in Classical Antiquity. Princeton University Press. ISBN 978-0-691-12598-5.
- Lewis, D. M.; Boardman, John (1994). The Cambridge Ancient History, Volume 6: The Fourth Century B.C. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 978-0-521-23348-4.
- Pomeroy, Sarah B.; Burstein, Stanley M.; Donlan, Walter; Roberts, Jennifer Tolbert (2008). A Brief History of Ancient Greece: Politics, Society, and Culture. Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0-19-537235-9.
- Webber, Christopher; McBride, Angus (2001). The Thracians, 700 BC – AD 46. Osprey Publishing. ISBN 978-1-84176-329-3.