![Ancient Greece - Vangelis [TITANS]](http://web.archive.org./web/20110427224913im_/http://i.ytimg.com/vi/auQe8te9Ftc/0.jpg "Ancient Greece - Vangelis [TITANS]")
![Homosexuality in Ancient Greece - The Myth is Collapsing [Audio Edited]](http://web.archive.org./web/20110427224913im_/http://i.ytimg.com/vi/aHk9JoXoBMY/0.jpg "Homosexuality in Ancient Greece - The Myth is Collapsing [Audio Edited]")
![The Ionian Sea, view from the island Kefalonia. e name Ionian comes from Greek Ἰόνιον (πέλαγος). Its etymology is unknown.[1] Ancient Greek writers, especially Aeschylus, linked it to the myth of Io, who was believed to have swum through the sea.](http://web.archive.org./web/20110427224913im_/http://cdn.wn.com/pd/03/95/ce73376a85d2d79319f567bfe1e4_grande.jpg "The Ionian Sea, view from the island Kefalonia. e name Ionian comes from Greek Ἰόνιον (πέλαγος). Its etymology is unknown.[1] Ancient Greek writers, especially Aeschylus, linked it to the myth of Io, who was believed to have swum through the sea.")
![Syracuse (Italian: Siracusa pronounced [siraˈku(ː)za], Sicilian: Sarausa, Ancient Greek: Συρακοῦσαι – transliterated: Syrakousai) is a historic city in southern Italy, the capital of the province of Syracuse.](http://web.archive.org./web/20110427224913im_/http://cdn.wn.com/pd/49/cd/d9195b181485399a85675439a96d_grande.jpg "Syracuse (Italian: Siracusa pronounced [siraˈku(ː)za], Sicilian: Sarausa, Ancient Greek: Συρακοῦσαι – transliterated: Syrakousai) is a historic city in southern Italy, the capital of the province of Syracuse.")
![The Ionian Sea, as seen from Corfu Island, Greece, and with Saranda, Albania in the background. The name Ionian comes from Greek Ἰόνιον (πέλαγος). Its etymology is unknown.[1] Ancient Greek writers, especially Aeschylus, linked it to the myth of Io, who was believed to have swum through the sea](http://web.archive.org./web/20110427224913im_/http://cdn.wn.com/pd/08/a6/84724f028e01a8b27361ea0b7658_grande.jpg "The Ionian Sea, as seen from Corfu Island, Greece, and with Saranda, Albania in the background. The name Ionian comes from Greek Ἰόνιον (πέλαγος). Its etymology is unknown.[1] Ancient Greek writers, especially Aeschylus, linked it to the myth of Io, who was believed to have swum through the sea")
| Name | Ancient Greek |
|---|---|
| Nativename | |
| Region | eastern Mediterranean |
| Extinct | developed into Koiné Greek by the 4th century BC |
| Familycolor | Indo-European |
| Fam1 | Indo-European |
| Fam2 | Hellenic |
| Script | Greek alphabet |
| Iso2 | grc|iso3=grc}} |
Ancient Greek is the historical stage in the development of the Greek language spanning the Archaic (c. 9th–6th centuries BC), Classical (c. 5th–4th centuries BC), and Hellenistic (c. 3rd century BC – 6th century AD) periods of ancient Greece and the ancient world. It is predated in the 2nd millennium BC by Mycenaean Greek. Its Hellenistic phase is known as Koine ("common") or Biblical Greek, and its late period mutates imperceptibly into Medieval Greek. Koine is regarded as a separate historical stage of its own, although in its earlier form it closely resembles Classical Greek. Prior to the Koine period, Greek of the classic and earlier periods included several regional dialects.
Ancient Greek was the language of Homer and of classical Athenian historians, playwrights, and philosophers. It has contributed many words to English vocabulary and has been a standard subject of study in Western educational institutions since the Renaissance. Latinized forms of Ancient Greek roots are used in many of the scientific names of species and in scientific terminology.
This article treats primarily the Epic and Classical phases of the language – see also the articles on Mycenaean Greek and on Koine Greek.
The major dialect groups of the Ancient Greek period can be assumed to have developed not later than 1120 BC, at the time of the Dorian invasion(s), and their first appearances as precise alphabetic writing began in the 8th century BC. The invasion would not be "Dorian" unless the invaders had some cultural relationship to the historical Dorians; moreover, the invasion is known to have displaced population to the later Attic-Ionic regions, who regarded themselves as descendants of the population displaced by or contending with the Dorians.
The ancient Greeks themselves considered there to be three major divisions of all the other Greek people—Dorians, Aeolians and Ionians (including Athenians), each with their own defining and distinctive dialects. Allowing for their oversight of Arcadian, an obscure mountain dialect, and Cyprian, far from the center of Greek scholarship, this division of people and language is quite similar to the results of modern archaeological-linguistic investigation.
One standard formulation for the dialects is: {| | |
West vs. non-west Greek is the strongest marked and earliest division, with non-west in subsets of Ionic-Attic (or Attic-Ionic) and Aeolic vs. Arcado-Cyprian, or Aeolic and Arcado-Cyprian vs. Ionic-Attic. Often non-west is called East Greek.
The Arcado-Cyprian group apparently descended more closely from the Mycenaean Greek of the Bronze Age.
Boeotian had come under a strong Northwest Greek influence, and can in some respects be considered a transitional dialect. Thessalian likewise had come under Northwest Greek influence, though to a lesser degree.
Pamphylian, spoken in a small area on the south-western coast of Asia Minor and little preserved in inscriptions, may be either a fifth major dialect group, or it is Mycenaean Greek overlaid by Doric, with a non-Greek native influence.
Ancient Macedonian was an Indo-European language closely related to Greek, but its exact relationship is unclear because of insufficient data: possibly a dialect of Greek; a sibling language to Greek; or a close cousin to Greek, and perhaps related to some extent, to Thracian and Phrygian languages. The Pella curse tablet is one of the many clear finds which support the idea that the Ancient Macedonian language is closely related to the Doric Greek dialect.
Most of the dialect sub-groups listed above had further subdivisions, generally equivalent to a city-state and its surrounding territory, or to an island. Doric notably had several intermediate divisions as well, into Island Doric (including Cretan Doric), Southern Peloponnesus Doric (including Laconian, the dialect of Sparta), and Northern Peloponnesus Doric (including Corinthian).
The Lesbian dialect was a member of the Aegean/Asiatic Aeolic sub-group.
All the groups were represented by colonies beyond Greece proper as well, and these colonies generally developed local characteristics, often under the influence of settlers or neighbors speaking different Greek dialects.
The dialects outside the Ionic group are known mainly from inscriptions, notable exceptions being fragments of the works of the poetess Sappho from the island of Lesbos and the poems of the Boeotian poet, Pindar.
After the conquests of Alexander the Great in the late 300's BC, a new international dialect known as Koine or Common Greek developed, largely based on Attic Greek, but with influence from other dialects. This dialect slowly replaced most of the older dialects, although Doric dialect has survived to the present in the form of the Tsakonian dialect of Modern Greek, spoken in the region of modern Sparta. Doric has also passed down its aorist terminations into most verbs of Demotic Greek. By about the 500's AD, the Koine had slowly metamorphosized into Medieval Greek.
See Proto-Greek for a description of sound changes from Proto-Indo-European up through attested Ancient Greek.
The pronunciation of Post-Classic Greek changed considerably from Ancient Greek, although the orthography still reflects features of the older language (see W. Sidney Allen, Vox Graeca – a guide to the pronunciation of Classical Greek). For a detailed description on the phonology changes from Ancient to Hellenistic periods of the Greek language, see the article on Koine Greek.
The examples below are intended to represent Attic Greek in the 5th century BC. Although ancient pronunciation can never be reconstructed with certainty, Greek in particular is very well documented from this period, and there is little disagreement among linguists as to the general nature of the sounds that the letters represented.
probably raised to by the 4th century BC.
was an allophone of , used before voiced consonants; occurred as an allophone of used before velars and as an allophone of before nasals, while , written (), was probably a voiceless allophone of used word initially.
Rules:
Greek, like all of the older Indo-European languages, is highly inflected. It is highly archaic in its preservation of Proto-Indo-European forms. In Ancient Greek nouns (including proper nouns) have five cases (nominative, genitive, dative, accusative and vocative), three genders (masculine, feminine and neuter), and three numbers (singular, dual and plural). Verbs have four moods (indicative, imperative, subjunctive, and optative), three voices (active, middle and passive), as well as three persons (first, second and third) and various other forms. Verbs are conjugated through seven combinations of tenses and aspect (generally simply called "tenses"): the present, future and imperfect are imperfective in aspect; the aorist (perfective aspect); a present perfect, pluperfect and future perfect. Most tenses display all four moods and three voices, although there is no future subjunctive or imperative. Also, there is no imperfect subjunctive, optative or imperative. There are infinitives and participles corresponding to the finite combinations of tense, aspect and voice.
There are two kinds of augment in Greek, syllabic and quantitative. The syllabic augment is added to stems beginning with consonants, and simply prefixes e (stems beginning with r, however, add er). The quantitative augment is added to stems beginning with vowels, and involves lengthening the vowel:
Some verbs augment irregularly; the most common variation is e → ei. The irregularity can be explained diachronically by the loss of s between vowels. In verbs with a prefix, the augment is placed not at the start of the word, but between the prefix and the original verb. For example, προσ(-)βάλλω (I attack) goes to προσεβάλoν in the aorist.
Following Homer's practice, the augment is sometimes not made in poetry, especially epic poetry.
The augment sometimes substitutes for reduplication; see below.
Irregular duplication can be understood diachronically. For example, lambanō (root lab) has the perfect stem eilēpha (not *lelēpha) because it was originally slambanō, with perfect seslēpha, becoming eilēpha through (semi-)regular change.
Reduplication is also visible in the present tense stems of certain verbs. These stems add a syllable consisting of the root's initial consonant followed by i. A nasal consonant appears after the reduplication in some verbs.
Ancient Greek was written in the Greek alphabet, with some variation among dialects. Early texts are written in boustrophedon style, but left-to-right became standard during the classic period. Modern editions of Ancient Greek texts are usually written with accents and breathing marks, interword spacing, modern punctuation, and sometimes mixed case, but these were all introduced later.
Transliterated into the Latin alphabet using a modern version of the Erasmian scheme: :.}}
Translated into English: :What you, men of Athens, have learned from my accusers, I do not know: but I, for my part, nearly forgot who I was thanks to them since they spoke so persuasively. And yet, of the truth, they have spoken, one might say, nothing at all.
Another example, from the beginning of Homer's Iliad:
Ancient Greek is often used in the coinage of modern technical terms in the European languages: see English words of Greek origin.
Modern authors rarely write in Ancient Greek, though Jan Křesadlo wrote some poetry and prose in Ancient Greek, some volumes of Asterix have been written in Attic Greek and Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone has been translated into Ancient Greek.
Ancient Greek is also used by, mainly Greek, organizations and individuals who wish to denote their respect, admiration or preference to the use of this language. This use is sometimes considered graphical, nationalistic or funny. In any case, the fact that modern Greeks can still wholly or partly understand texts written in non-archaic forms of ancient Greek shows the affinity of modern Greek language to its ancestral predecessor.
Category:Varieties of Greek Category:Ancient languages Language
This text is licensed under the Creative Commons CC-BY-SA License. This text was originally published on Wikipedia and was developed by the Wikipedia community.
| Name | Euripides |
|---|---|
| Caption | Bust of Euripides:Roman marble copy of a 4th-century Greek original (Museo Pio-Clementino, Rome) |
| Birth date | c. 480 BC |
| Birth place | Salamís |
| Death date | c. 406 BC |
| Death place | Macedonia |
| Occupation | Playwright |
Euripides (Ancient Greek: ) (ca. 480 BC – 406 BC) was the last of the three great tragedians of classical Athens (the other two being Aeschylus and Sophocles). Ancient scholars thought that Euripides had written ninety-five plays, although four of those were probably written by Critias. Eighteen or nineteen of Euripides' plays have survived complete. There has been debate about his authorship of Rhesus, largely on stylistic grounds and ignoring classical evidence that the play was his. Fragments, some substantial, of most of the other plays also survive. More of his plays have survived than those of Aeschylus and Sophocles together, because of the unique nature of the Euripidean manuscript tradition.
Euripides is known primarily for having reshaped the formal structure of Athenian tragedy by portraying strong female characters and intelligent slaves and by satirizing many heroes of Greek mythology. His plays seem modern by comparison with those of his contemporaries, focusing on the inner lives and motives of his characters in a way previously unknown to Greek audiences.
His father's name was either Mnesarchus or Mnesarchides and his mother's name was Cleito. Evidence suggests that the family was wealthy and influential. It is recorded that he served as a cup-bearer for Apollo's dancers, but he grew to question the religion he grew up with, exposed as he was to thinkers such as Protagoras, Socrates, and Anaxagoras.
, Paris.]]
He was married twice, to Choerile and Melito, though sources disagree as to which woman he married first. He had three sons and it is rumored that he also had a daughter who was killed after a rabid dog attacked her (some say this was merely a joke made by Aristophanes, who often poked fun at Euripides). The record of Euripides' public life, other than his involvement in dramatic competitions, is almost non-existent. The only reliable story of note is one by Aristotle about Euripides' involvement in a dispute over a liturgy (an account that offers strong evidence that Euripides was a wealthy man). It has been said that he traveled to Syracuse, Sicily; that he engaged in various public or political activities during his lifetime; that he wrote his tragedies in a sanctuary, The Cave of Euripides on Salamis Island; and that he left Athens at the invitation of King Archelaus I of Macedon and stayed with him in Macedonia and allegedly died there in 406 B.C. after being accidentally attacked by the king's hunting dogs while walking in the woods.
He was a frequent target of Aristophanes' humour. He appears as a character in The Acharnians, Thesmophoriazusae, and most memorably in The Frogs (where Dionysus travels to Hades to bring Euripides back from the dead; after a competition of poetry, the god opts to bring Aeschylus instead).
Euripides' final competition in Athens was in 408 BC; there is a story that he left Athens embittered over his defeats. He accepted an invitation by the king of Macedon in 408 or 407 BC, and once there he wrote Archelaus in honour of his host. He is believed to have died there in winter 407/6 BC; ancient biographers have told many stories about his death, but the simple truth is that it was probably his first exposure to the harsh Macedonia winter which killed him. The Bacchae was performed after his death in 405 BC and won first prize.
In comparison with Aeschylus (who won thirteen times) and Sophocles (who had eighteen victories) Euripides was the least honoured of the three, at least in his lifetime. Later in the 4th century BC, Euripides' plays became the most popular, largely because of the simplicity of their language. His works influenced New Comedy and Roman drama, and were later idolized by the French classicists; his influence on drama extends to modern times.
Euripides' greatest works include Alcestis, Medea, Trojan Women, and The Bacchae. Also considered notable is Cyclops, the only complete satyr play to have survived.
While the seven plays of Aeschylus and Sophocles that have survived were those considered their best, the manuscript containing Euripides' plays was part of a multiple volume, alphabetically-arranged collection of Euripides' works, rediscovered after lying in a monastic collection for approximately 800 years. The manuscript contains those plays whose (Greek) titles begin with the letters E (eta) to K (kappa). This accounts for the large number of extant plays of Euripides (among ancient dramatists, only Plautus, who lived 200 years after Euripides, has more surviving plays), the survival of a satyr play, and the absence of a trilogy. It is a testament to the quality of Euripides' plays that, though their survival was dependent on the letter their title began with and not (as with Aeschylus and Sophocles) their quality, they are ranked alongside and often above the plays of Aeschylus and Sophocles.
In June 2005, classicists at Oxford University worked on a joint project with Brigham Young University, using multi-spectral imaging technology to recover previously illegible writing (see References). Some of this work employed infrared technology—previously used for satellite imaging—to detect previously unknown material by Euripides in fragments of the Oxyrhynchus papyri, a collection of ancient manuscripts held by the university.
Euripides' realistic characterizations were sometimes at the expense of a realistic plot; Among the three extant ancient Greek tragedians, Euripides is particularly known for employing the literary device known as deus ex machina, whereby a god or goddess abruptly appears at drama's end to provide a contrived solution to an intractable problem. In the opinion of Aristotle, writing his Poetics a century later, this is an inadequate way to end a play. Many classicists cite this as a reason why Euripides was less popular in his own time.
Category:Ancient Greek dramatists and playwrights Category:Ancient Greek poets Category:Ancient Athenians Category:Courtiers of Archelaus I of Macedon Category:Ancient Greeks accused or listed as atheists Category:5th-century BC Greek people Category:5th-century BC writers Category:480 BC births Category:406 BC deaths Category:Tragic poets
This text is licensed under the Creative Commons CC-BY-SA License. This text was originally published on Wikipedia and was developed by the Wikipedia community.
![The Ionian Sea, view from the island Kefalonia. e name Ionian comes from Greek Ἰόνιον (πέλαγος). Its etymology is unknown.[1] Ancient Greek writers, especially Aeschylus, linked it to the myth of Io, who was believed to have swum through the sea.](http://web.archive.org./web/20110427224913im_/http://cdn.wn.com/pd/03/95/ce73376a85d2d79319f567bfe1e4_thumb.jpg "The Ionian Sea, view from the island Kefalonia. e name Ionian comes from Greek Ἰόνιον (πέλαγος). Its etymology is unknown.[1] Ancient Greek writers, especially Aeschylus, linked it to the myth of Io, who was believed to have swum through the sea.")
![Syracuse (Italian: Siracusa pronounced [siraˈku(ː)za], Sicilian: Sarausa, Ancient Greek: Συρακοῦσαι – transliterated: Syrakousai) is a historic city in southern Italy, the capital of the province of Syracuse.](http://web.archive.org./web/20110427224913im_/http://cdn.wn.com/pd/49/cd/d9195b181485399a85675439a96d_thumb.jpg "Syracuse (Italian: Siracusa pronounced [siraˈku(ː)za], Sicilian: Sarausa, Ancient Greek: Συρακοῦσαι – transliterated: Syrakousai) is a historic city in southern Italy, the capital of the province of Syracuse.")
![The Ionian Sea, as seen from Corfu Island, Greece, and with Saranda, Albania in the background. The name Ionian comes from Greek Ἰόνιον (πέλαγος). Its etymology is unknown.[1] Ancient Greek writers, especially Aeschylus, linked it to the myth of Io, who was believed to have swum through the sea](http://web.archive.org./web/20110427224913im_/http://cdn.wn.com/pd/08/a6/84724f028e01a8b27361ea0b7658_thumb.jpg "The Ionian Sea, as seen from Corfu Island, Greece, and with Saranda, Albania in the background. The name Ionian comes from Greek Ἰόνιον (πέλαγος). Its etymology is unknown.[1] Ancient Greek writers, especially Aeschylus, linked it to the myth of Io, who was believed to have swum through the sea")
