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79-496: The Adonia ( Greek : Ἀδώνια ) was a festival celebrated annually by women in ancient Greece to mourn the death of Adonis , the consort of Aphrodite . It is best attested in classical Athens , though other sources provide evidence for the ritual mourning of Adonis elsewhere in the Greek world, including Hellenistic Alexandria and Argos in the second century AD. According to Ronda R. Simms in her article, "Mourning and Community at

158-570: A basis for coinages: anthropology , photography , telephony , isomer , biomechanics , cinematography , etc. Together with Latin words , they form the foundation of international scientific and technical vocabulary ; for example, all words ending in -logy ('discourse'). There are many English words of Greek origin . Greek is an independent branch of the Indo-European language family. The ancient language most closely related to it may be ancient Macedonian , which, by most accounts,

237-552: A fairly stable set of consonantal contrasts . The main phonological changes occurred during the Hellenistic and Roman period (see Koine Greek phonology for details): In all its stages, the morphology of Greek shows an extensive set of productive derivational affixes , a limited but productive system of compounding and a rich inflectional system. Although its morphological categories have been fairly stable over time, morphological changes are present throughout, particularly in

316-508: A faster, more convenient cursive writing style with the use of ink and quill . The Greek alphabet consists of 24 letters, each with an uppercase ( majuscule ) and lowercase ( minuscule ) form. The letter sigma has an additional lowercase form (ς) used in the final position of a word: In addition to the letters, the Greek alphabet features a number of diacritical signs : three different accent marks ( acute , grave , and circumflex ), originally denoting different shapes of pitch accent on

395-531: A foreign language. It is also often stated that the historical changes have been relatively slight compared with some other languages. According to one estimation, " Homeric Greek is probably closer to Demotic than 12-century Middle English is to modern spoken English ". Greek is spoken today by at least 13 million people, principally in Greece and Cyprus along with a sizable Greek-speaking minority in Albania near

474-480: A passion the goddess has inflicted on him. In the poem, a series of divine figures from classical mythology, including Hermes , Priapus , and Aphrodite herself, interrogate the shepherd about his lovesickness. As Daphnis lies dying, Priapus asks: "Wretched Daphnis, why pinest thou?"; Hermes inquires: "Daphnis, who wastes thee away?" Alongside these mythological figures appear shepherds and goatherds, who likewise wonder "what harm had befallen" Daphnis. Finally, Aphrodite,

553-687: A strict collection of those works considered to have been composed by Theocritus himself. Theocritus was from Sicily , as he refers to Polyphemus , the Cyclops in the Odyssey , as his "countryman." He also probably lived in Alexandria for a while, where he wrote about everyday life, notably Pharmakeutria . It is also speculated that Theocritus was born in Syracuse , lived on the island of Kos , and lived in Egypt during

632-766: Is also found in Bulgaria near the Greek-Bulgarian border. Greek is also spoken worldwide by the sizable Greek diaspora which has notable communities in the United States , Australia , Canada , South Africa , Chile , Brazil , Argentina , Russia , Ukraine , the United Kingdom , and throughout the European Union , especially in Germany . Historically, significant Greek-speaking communities and regions were found throughout

711-742: Is an Indo-European language, constituting an independent Hellenic branch within the Indo-European language family. It is native to Greece , Cyprus , Italy (in Calabria and Salento ), southern Albania , and other regions of the Balkans , Caucasus , the Black Sea coast, Asia Minor , and the Eastern Mediterranean . It has the longest documented history of any Indo-European language, spanning at least 3,400 years of written records. Its writing system

790-474: Is an Indo-European language, but also includes a number of borrowings from the languages of the populations that inhabited Greece before the arrival of Proto-Greeks, some documented in Mycenaean texts ; they include a large number of Greek toponyms . The form and meaning of many words have changed. Loanwords (words of foreign origin) have entered the language, mainly from Latin, Venetian , and Turkish . During

869-590: Is another man, but I, Theocritus, who wrote these poems, am one of the great populace of Syracuse, the son of Praxagoras and renowned Philinna; and the Muse I have adopted is no alien." The last line may mean that he wrote nothing but bucolic poems, or that he only wrote in Doric . The assertion that he was from Syracuse appears to be upheld by allusions in the Idylls (7.7, 28.16–18). The information concerning his parentage bears

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948-406: Is assigned to Theocritus by recent editors. The following poems are now generally considered to be spurious: 19. Love stealing Honey . The poem is anonymous in the manuscripts and the conception of Love is not Theocritean. 20. Herdsman , 21. Fishermen , 23. Passionate Lover . These three poems are remarkable for the corrupt state of their text, which makes it likely that they have come from

1027-645: Is correct. Many agree with Plutarch, and put the festival around midsummer, though Dillon argues that Aristophanes' placement of the festival near the beginning of spring is "without question" correct. Some scholars, such as James Fredal, suggest that there was in fact no fixed date for the Adonia to be celebrated. The main feature of the festival at Athens were the "Gardens of Adonis", broken pieces of terracotta which had lettuce and fennel seeds sown in them. These seeds sprouted, but soon withered and died. Though most scholars say that these gardens withered due to being exposed to

1106-610: Is cured of his passion and naively relates how he repulses the overtures now made to him by Galatea. The monster of Homer's Odyssey has been "written up to date" after the Alexandrian manner and has become a gentle simpleton. "Idyll 7," the Harvest Feast , is the most important of the bucolic poems. The scene is laid in the isle of Kos . The poet speaks in the first person and is called Simichidas by his friends. Other poets are introduced under feigned names. Ancient critics identified

1185-402: Is held to have taken place in 277 BC, and a recently discovered inscription shows that Arsinoë died in 270, in the fifteenth year of her brother's reign. This poem, therefore, together with xv, which Theocritus wrote to please Arsinoë must fall within this period. The encomium upon Hiero II would seem prior to that upon Ptolemy, since in it Theocritus is a hungry poet seeking for a patron, while in

1264-399: Is known of Theocritus beyond what can be inferred from his writings. We must, however, handle these with some caution, since some of the poems ( Idylls ; Εἰδύλλια ) commonly attributed to him have little claim to authenticity. It is clear that at a very early date two collections were made: one consisting of poems whose authorship was doubtful yet formed a corpus of bucolic poetry, the other

1343-456: Is occupied by Idyll 7, the "Harvest Feast." Chisholm praises the mimes, saying "These three mimes are wonderfully natural and lifelike. There is nothing in ancient literature so vivid and real as the chatter of Gorgo and Praxinoë, and the voces populi in 15". In addition to the Bucolics and Mimes, there are three poems which cannot be brought into any other class: The genuineness of the last

1422-510: Is protected and promoted officially as a regional and minority language in Armenia, Hungary , Romania, and Ukraine. It is recognized as a minority language and protected in Turkey by the 1923 Treaty of Lausanne . The phonology , morphology , syntax , and vocabulary of the language show both conservative and innovative tendencies across the entire attestation of the language from the ancient to

1501-763: Is sometimes called aljamiado , as when Romance languages are written in the Arabic alphabet. Article 1 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in Greek: Transcription of the example text into Latin alphabet : Article 1 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in English: Proto-Greek Mycenaean Ancient Koine Medieval Modern Theocritus Little

1580-518: Is spoken by at least 13.5 million people today in Greece, Cyprus, Italy, Albania, Turkey , and the many other countries of the Greek diaspora . Greek roots have been widely used for centuries and continue to be widely used to coin new words in other languages; Greek and Latin are the predominant sources of international scientific vocabulary . Greek has been spoken in the Balkan peninsula since around

1659-758: Is still used internationally for the writing of Ancient Greek . In Greek, the question mark is written as the English semicolon, while the functions of the colon and semicolon are performed by a raised point (•), known as the ano teleia ( άνω τελεία ). In Greek the comma also functions as a silent letter in a handful of Greek words, principally distinguishing ό,τι ( ó,ti , 'whatever') from ότι ( óti , 'that'). Ancient Greek texts often used scriptio continua ('continuous writing'), which means that ancient authors and scribes would write word after word with no spaces or punctuation between words to differentiate or mark boundaries. Boustrophedon , or bi-directional text,

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1738-616: Is supposed to mourn the loss of Adonis himself. Outside of Athens, a celebration of Adonis is attested in Hellenistic Alexandria, in Theocritus ' 15th Idyll . The Idyll 15 is said to be the longest surviving account of the Adonia we have to date. The festival described by Theocritus, unlike the one celebrated in Athens, was a cult with state patronage. It included an annual competition between women singing dirges for Adonis. Rites lamenting

1817-630: Is the Greek alphabet , which has been used for approximately 2,800 years; previously, Greek was recorded in writing systems such as Linear B and the Cypriot syllabary . The alphabet arose from the Phoenician script and was in turn the basis of the Latin , Cyrillic , Coptic , Gothic , and many other writing systems. The Greek language holds a very important place in the history of the Western world. Beginning with

1896-484: Is uncertain, with ancient sources contradicting one another. Aristophanes , in his Lysistrata , has the festival take place in the early spring of 415 BC, when the Sicilian Expedition was proposed; Plutarch puts the festival on the eve of the expedition's setting sail, in midsummer that year. Theophrastus' Enquiry into Plants (Περι φυτων ιστορια) and Plato's Phaedrus are both often taken as evidence for

1975-448: The Aeolic dialect . The first is a very graceful poem presented together with a distaff to Theugenis, wife of Nicias, a doctor of Miletus, on the occasion of a voyage thither undertaken by the poet. The theme of 29 is similar to that of 12. A very corrupt poem, only found in one very late manuscript, was discovered by Ziegler in 1864. As the subject and style very closely resemble that of 29, it

2054-491: The Dirges . The other classes are all represented in the larger collection which has come down to us. The distinction between these is that the scenes of the former are laid in the country and those of the latter in a town. The most famous of the Bucolics are 1 , 6 , 7 and 11 . In "Idyll 1" Thyrsis sings to a goatherd about how Daphnis , the mythical herdsman, having defied the power of Aphrodite , dies rather than yielding to

2133-486: The Eastern Mediterranean , in what are today Southern Italy , Turkey , Cyprus , Syria , Lebanon , Israel , Palestine , Egypt , and Libya ; in the area of the Black Sea , in what are today Turkey, Bulgaria , Romania , Ukraine , Russia , Georgia , Armenia , and Azerbaijan ; and, to a lesser extent, in the Western Mediterranean in and around colonies such as Massalia , Monoikos , and Mainake . It

2212-510: The Indo-Iranian languages (see Graeco-Aryan ), but little definitive evidence has been found. In addition, Albanian has also been considered somewhat related to Greek and Armenian, and it has been proposed that they all form a higher-order subgroup along with other extinct languages of the ancient Balkans; this higher-order subgroup is usually termed Palaeo-Balkan , and Greek has a central position in it. Linear B , attested as early as

2291-547: The Muse , who cackle against the Chian bard and find their labour lost." Other persons mentioned are Nicias, a physician of Miletus, whose name occurs in other poems, and Aratus , whom the scholiasts identify with the author of the Phenomena . Several of the other bucolic poems consist of singing-matches, conducted according to the rules of amoebaean poetry , in which the second singer takes

2370-474: The Thesmophoria , Haloa , and Skira . Unlike these other festivals, however, the Adonia was not state-organised, or part of the official state calendar of religious celebration. In fact, it was not found to be celebrated by any official cults, like the cult of Bendis, or foreign cults, whose participants were mostly non-natives, like Isis. Prostitutes, respectable women, non-citizens and citizens alike celebrated

2449-492: The nominal and verbal systems. The major change in the nominal morphology since the classical stage was the disuse of the dative case (its functions being largely taken over by the genitive ). The verbal system has lost the infinitive , the synthetically -formed future, and perfect tenses and the optative mood . Many have been replaced by periphrastic ( analytical ) forms. Pronouns show distinctions in person (1st, 2nd, and 3rd), number (singular, dual , and plural in

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2528-465: The 3rd millennium BC, or possibly earlier. The earliest written evidence is a Linear B clay tablet found in Messenia that dates to between 1450 and 1350 BC, making Greek the world's oldest recorded living language . Among the Indo-European languages, its date of earliest written attestation is matched only by the now-extinct Anatolian languages . The Greek language is conventionally divided into

2607-615: The Adonia having been celebrated in the summer. In Egypt and Syria in the Roman period, the Adonia coincided with the rising of the star Sirius in late July. As the Sicilian Expedition sailed in June 415, this contradicts both Aristophanes' and Plutarch's dating of the Adonia; the Athenian Adonia must have been celebrated at a different time. Modern scholars disagree on which of these sources

2686-460: The Adonia. Also unlike the Thesmophoria, the Adonia was never celebrated in a designated area. Over the course of the festival, Athenian women took to the rooftops of their houses. They danced, sang, and ritually mourned the death of Adonis . They planted "Gardens of Adonis" – lettuce and fennel seeds, planted in potsherds – which sprouted before withering and dying. After the rooftop celebrations,

2765-435: The Athenian Adonia", the celebration of the Adonia was the only evidence that was found about worship of Adonis in Athens, as of 1997. There were no temples, statues, or priests in worship to Adonis. In Athens, the Adonia took place annually, and was organised and celebrated by women. It was one of a number of Athenian festivals which were celebrated solely by women and addressed sexual or reproductive subjects – others included

2844-486: The Greek alphabet since approximately the 9th century BC. It was created by modifying the Phoenician alphabet , with the innovation of adopting certain letters to represent the vowels. The variant of the alphabet in use today is essentially the late Ionic variant, introduced for writing classical Attic in 403 BC. In classical Greek, as in classical Latin, only upper-case letters existed. The lower-case Greek letters were developed much later by medieval scribes to permit

2923-425: The Greek language are often emphasized. Although Greek has undergone morphological and phonological changes comparable to those seen in other languages, never since classical antiquity has its cultural, literary, and orthographic tradition been interrupted to the extent that one can speak of a new language emerging. Greek speakers today still tend to regard literary works of ancient Greek as part of their own rather than

3002-491: The Greek language was the Cypriot syllabary (also a descendant of Linear A via the intermediate Cypro-Minoan syllabary ), which is closely related to Linear B but uses somewhat different syllabic conventions to represent phoneme sequences. The Cypriot syllabary is attested in Cyprus from the 11th century BC until its gradual abandonment in the late Classical period, in favor of the standard Greek alphabet. Greek has been written in

3081-629: The Greek verb have likewise remained largely the same over the course of the language's history but with significant changes in the number of distinctions within each category and their morphological expression. Greek verbs have synthetic inflectional forms for: Many aspects of the syntax of Greek have remained constant: verbs agree with their subject only, the use of the surviving cases is largely intact (nominative for subjects and predicates, accusative for objects of most verbs and many prepositions, genitive for possessors), articles precede nouns, adpositions are largely prepositional, relative clauses follow

3160-661: The Greek-Albanian border. A significant percentage of Albania's population has knowledge of the Greek language due in part to the Albanian wave of immigration to Greece in the 1980s and '90s and the Greek community in the country. Prior to the Greco-Turkish War and the resulting population exchange in 1923 a very large population of Greek-speakers also existed in Turkey , though very few remain today. A small Greek-speaking community

3239-404: The acute during the late 20th century, and it has only been retained in typography . After the writing reform of 1982, most diacritics are no longer used. Since then, Greek has been written mostly in the simplified monotonic orthography (or monotonic system), which employs only the acute accent and the diaeresis. The traditional system, now called the polytonic orthography (or polytonic system),

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3318-402: The ancient language; singular and plural alone in later stages), and gender (masculine, feminine, and neuter), and decline for case (from six cases in the earliest forms attested to four in the modern language). Nouns, articles, and adjectives show all the distinctions except for a person. Both attributive and predicative adjectives agree with the noun. The inflectional categories of

3397-592: The celebrations. Laurialan Reitzammer argues that the festival described by Lucian is one that was brought back to Syria from Greece, rather than being of native Syrian origin. The Phoenician text of the Pyrgi Tablets (western central Italy) seem to indicate that the commemoration of the death of Adonis was an important rite in Central Italy, that is if, as is generally assumed, the Phoenician phrase bym qbr ʼlm "on

3476-471: The character Sicelidas of Samos with Asclepiades of Samos , and the character Lycidas, "the goatherd of Cydonia," with the poet Astacides, whom Callimachus calls "the Cretan, the goatherd." Theocritus speaks of himself as having already gained fame, and says that his songs have been brought by report even unto the throne of Zeus . He praises Philitas , the veteran poet of Kos, and criticizes "the fledgelings of

3555-456: The day of the burial of the divinity" refers to this rite. This claim would be further strengthened if Schmidtz's recent claim can be accepted that the Phoenician phrase bmt n' bbt means "at the death of (the) Handsome (one) [=Adonis]." Together with evidence of the rite of Adonai in the Liber Linteus in the 7th column, there is a strong likelihood that the ritual was practiced in (at least)

3634-595: The death of Adonis are also attested in Argos in the second century AD: the Greek geographer Pausanias describes the women of Argos mourning Adonis' death at a shrine inside the temple of Zeus Soter. Also in the second century, On the Syrian Goddess , attributed to Lucian , describes an Adonia celebrated in Byblos . There is no mention of Gardens of Adonis at this festival, but ritual prostitution and mystery rites are involved in

3713-404: The early 19th century that was used for literary and official purposes in the newly formed Greek state. In 1976, Dimotiki was declared the official language of Greece, after having incorporated features of Katharevousa and thus giving birth to Standard Modern Greek , used today for all official purposes and in education . The historical unity and continuing identity between the various stages of

3792-602: The epics of Homer , ancient Greek literature includes many works of lasting importance in the European canon . Greek is also the language in which many of the foundational texts in science and philosophy were originally composed. The New Testament of the Christian Bible was also originally written in Greek. Together with the Latin texts and traditions of the Roman world , the Greek texts and Greek societies of antiquity constitute

3871-452: The following periods: In the modern era, the Greek language entered a state of diglossia : the coexistence of vernacular and archaizing written forms of the language. What came to be known as the Greek language question was a polarization between two competing varieties of Modern Greek: Dimotiki , the vernacular form of Modern Greek proper, and Katharevousa , meaning 'purified', a compromise between Dimotiki and Ancient Greek developed in

3950-555: The following: Daughters of Proetus, Hopes, Hymns, Heroines, Dirges, Lyrics, Elegies, Iambics, Epigrams." The first of these may have been known to Virgil , who refers to the Proetides at Eclogue 6.48. The spurious poem 21 may have been one of the Hopes , and poem 26 may have been one of the Heroines ; elegiacs are found in 8.33—60, and the spurious epitaph on Bion may have been one of

4029-466: The goddess of love, appears to taunt Daphnis for his hubris: "Thou indeed, Daphnis, didst boast that thou wouldst bend Love! Hast not thou, in thine own person, been bent by grievous love?" The failure of these figures to comfort Daphnis in his dying moments thematizes classical beliefs about the folly of mortals who challenge the gods. In "Idyll 11" Polyphemus is depicted as in love with the sea-nymph Galatea and finding solace in song. In "Idyll 6," he

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4108-449: The heat of the summer, Dillon, who believes that the Adonia was held in the spring, says that the plants instead failed because they could not take root in the shallow soil held by the terracotta shards. In support of this, he cites Diogenianus , who says that in the Gardens of Adonis, seedlings "wither quickly because they have not taken root". In ancient Greece, the phrase "Gardens of Adonis"

4187-439: The infinitive entirely (employing a raft of new periphrastic constructions instead) and uses participles more restrictively. The loss of the dative led to a rise of prepositional indirect objects (and the use of the genitive to directly mark these as well). Ancient Greek tended to be verb-final, but neutral word order in the modern language is VSO or SVO. Modern Greek inherits most of its vocabulary from Ancient Greek, which in turn

4266-593: The joys of summer and winter respectively, which have been provided with a clumsy preface, ll.1-6, while an early editor of a bucolic collection has appended an epilogue in which he takes leave of the Bucolic Muses. On the other hand, it is clear that both poems were in Virgil's Theocritus, and that they passed the scrutiny of the editor who formed the short collection of Theocritean Bucolics. The mimes are three in number: 2, 14, and 15. In 2 Simaetha, deserted by Delphis, tells

4345-463: The late 15th century BC, was the first script used to write Greek. It is basically a syllabary , which was finally deciphered by Michael Ventris and John Chadwick in the 1950s (its precursor, Linear A , has not been deciphered and most likely encodes a non-Greek language). The language of the Linear B texts, Mycenaean Greek , is the earliest known form of Greek. Another similar system used to write

4424-621: The membership of Greece and Cyprus in the European Union, Greek is one of the organization's 24 official languages . Greek is recognized as a minority language in Albania, and used co-officially in some of its municipalities, in the districts of Gjirokastër and Sarandë . It is also an official minority language in the regions of Apulia and Calabria in Italy. In the framework of the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages , Greek

4503-441: The modern period. The division into conventional periods is, as with all such periodizations, relatively arbitrary, especially because, in all periods, Ancient Greek has enjoyed high prestige, and the literate borrowed heavily from it. Across its history, the syllabic structure of Greek has varied little: Greek shows a mixed syllable structure, permitting complex syllabic onsets but very restricted codas. It has only oral vowels and

4582-399: The noun they modify and relative pronouns are clause-initial. However, the morphological changes also have their counterparts in the syntax, and there are also significant differences between the syntax of the ancient and that of the modern form of the language . Ancient Greek made great use of participial constructions and of constructions involving the infinitive, and the modern variety lacks

4661-521: The objects of study of the discipline of Classics . During antiquity , Greek was by far the most widely spoken lingua franca in the Mediterranean world . It eventually became the official language of the Byzantine Empire and developed into Medieval Greek . In its modern form , Greek is the official language of Greece and Cyprus and one of the 24 official languages of the European Union . It

4740-706: The older periods of Greek, loanwords into Greek acquired Greek inflections, thus leaving only a foreign root word. Modern borrowings (from the 20th century on), especially from French and English, are typically not inflected; other modern borrowings are derived from Albanian , South Slavic ( Macedonian / Bulgarian ) and Eastern Romance languages ( Aromanian and Megleno-Romanian ). Greek words have been widely borrowed into other languages, including English. Example words include: mathematics , physics , astronomy , democracy , philosophy , athletics , theatre, rhetoric , baptism , evangelist , etc. Moreover, Greek words and word elements continue to be productive as

4819-637: The other he is well satisfied with the world. Now Hiero first came to the front in 275 when he was made General: Theocritus speaks of his achievements as still to come, and the silence of the poet would show that Hiero's marriage to Phulistis, his victory over the Mamertines at the Longanus and his election as "King", events which are ascribed to 270, had not yet taken place. If so, 17 and 15 can only have been written within 275 and 270. Two of these are certainly by Theocritus, 28 and 29, composed in Aeolic verse and in

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4898-526: The poet praises Hiero II of Syracuse , in 17 Ptolemy Philadelphus , and in 22 the Dioscuri . The other poems are 13, the story of Hylas and the Nymphs , and 24 the youthful Heracles . In 13 he makes use of word-painting; in 16 there is some delicate fancy in the description of his poems as Charites , and a passage at the end, where he foretells the joys of peace after the enemy have been driven out of Sicily , has

4977-435: The same source and possibly are by the same author. The Fishermen has been much admired. It is addressed to Diophantus and conveys a moral, that one should work and not dream, illustrated by the story of an old fisherman who dreams that he has caught a fish of gold and narrates his vision to his mate. As Leonidas of Tarentum wrote epigrams on fishermen, and one of them is a dedication of his tackle to Poseidon by Diophantus,

5056-665: The southern part of Etruria from at least circe 500 bce through the second century bce (depending on one's dating of the Liber Linteus). The Liber Linteus also seems to support the date of this ritual in July. Adonis himself does not seem to be directly mentioned in any of the extant language of either text. In the Roman world, the festival was celebrated on 19 July. Greek language Greek ( Modern Greek : Ελληνικά , romanized :  Elliniká , [eliniˈka] ; Ancient Greek : Ἑλληνική , romanized :  Hellēnikḗ )

5135-505: The stamp of authenticity, and disposes of a rival theory based upon a misinterpretation of Idyll 7—which made him the son of one Simichus. A larger collection, possibly more extensive than that of Artemidorus, and including poems of doubtful authenticity, was known to the author of the Suda , who says: "Theocritus wrote the so-called bucolic poems in the Doric dialect. Some persons also attribute to him

5214-402: The story of her love to the moon; in 14 Aeschines narrates his quarrel with his sweetheart, and is advised to go to Egypt and enlist in the army of Ptolemy Philadelphus ; in 15 Gorgo and Praxinoë go to the festival of Adonis . In the best manuscript 2 comes immediately before 14, an arrangement which is obviously right, since it places the three mimes together. The second place in the manuscripts

5293-437: The stressed vowel; the so-called breathing marks ( rough and smooth breathing ), originally used to signal presence or absence of word-initial /h/; and the diaeresis , used to mark the full syllabic value of a vowel that would otherwise be read as part of a diphthong. These marks were introduced during the course of the Hellenistic period. Actual usage of the grave in handwriting saw a rapid decline in favor of uniform usage of

5372-547: The subject chosen by the first and contributes a variation on the same theme. It may be noted that Theocritus' rustic characters differ greatly in refinement. Those in "Idyll 5" are low fellows who indulge in coarse abuse. Idylls 4 and 5 are laid in the neighborhood of Croton, and we may infer that Theocritus was personally acquainted with Magna Graecia . Suspicion has been cast upon idylls 8 and 9 on various grounds. An extreme view holds that within "Idyll 9" there exist two genuine Theocritean fragments, ll.7-13 and 15–20, describing

5451-427: The time of Ptolemy II . The record of these recensions is preserved by two epigrams, one of which proceeds from Artemidorus of Tarsus , a grammarian, who lived in the time of Sulla and is said to have been the first editor of these poems. He says, "The Muses of country song were once scattered, but now they are all together in one pen, in one flock." The second epigram is anonymous, and runs as follows: "The Chian

5530-462: The true bucolic ring. The most that can be said of 22 and 24 is that they are very dramatic. Otherwise they differ little from work done by other poets, such as Callimachus and Apollonius Rhodius . From another point of view, however, these two poems 16 and 17 are supremely interesting, since they are the only ones which can be dated. In 17 Theocritus celebrates the incestuous marriage of Ptolemy Philadelphus with his sister Arsinoë . This marriage

5609-422: The woman did with the gardens. Most assume they put the gardens out on their rooftops to wither and die, in order to symbolize how Adonis "sprouted and died quickly". Simms believes that the gardens were made to be used as funerary biers for the little effigies of Adonis to be placed in. These little effigies were made so that the women could have something to focus their mourning towards, because this entire festival

5688-469: The women descended to the streets with these Gardens of Adonis, and small images of him; they then conducted a mock funeral procession, before ritually burying the images and the remains of the gardens at sea or in springs. The rites observed during the festival are not otherwise paralleled in ancient Greek religion; like Adonis himself they probably originated in the Near East. The date of the Adonia at Athens

5767-568: Was a distinct dialect of Greek itself. Aside from the Macedonian question, current consensus regards Phrygian as the closest relative of Greek, since they share a number of phonological, morphological and lexical isoglosses , with some being exclusive between them. Scholars have proposed a Graeco-Phrygian subgroup out of which Greek and Phrygian originated. Among living languages, some Indo-Europeanists suggest that Greek may be most closely related to Armenian (see Graeco-Armenian ) or

5846-549: Was also used as the official language of government and religion in the Christian Nubian kingdoms , for most of their history. Greek, in its modern form, is the official language of Greece, where it is spoken by almost the entire population. It is also the official language of Cyprus (nominally alongside Turkish ) and the British Overseas Territory of Akrotiri and Dhekelia (alongside English ). Because of

5925-546: Was also used in Ancient Greek. Greek has occasionally been written in the Latin script , especially in areas under Venetian rule or by Greek Catholics . The term Frankolevantinika / Φραγκολεβαντίνικα applies when the Latin script is used to write Greek in the cultural ambit of Catholicism (because Frankos / Φράγκος is an older Greek term for West-European dating to when most of (Roman Catholic Christian) West Europe

6004-444: Was attacked by Ulrich von Wilamowitz-Moellendorff on account of the crudity of the language, which sometimes degenerates into doggerel. However, Chisholm considered it genuine, arguing that Theocritus had intentionally used realistic language for the sake of dramatic effect and that the manuscript evidence supported its genuineness. Eustathius quotes from it as the work of Theocritus. Three of these are Hymns: 16, 17, and 22. In 16,

6083-566: Was under the control of the Frankish Empire ). Frankochiotika / Φραγκοχιώτικα (meaning 'Catholic Chiot') alludes to the significant presence of Catholic missionaries based on the island of Chios . Additionally, the term Greeklish is often used when the Greek language is written in a Latin script in online communications. The Latin script is nowadays used by the Greek-speaking communities of Southern Italy . The Yevanic dialect

6162-519: Was used proverbially to refer to something "trivial and wasteful". The symbolism of the Gardens of Adonis is also widely debated: according to James George Frazer, the Gardens of Adonis were supposed to be a sort of ritual performed in order to promote a good harvest, that the actual crops were to grow fast like the little gardens. To John J. Winkler the gardens were meant to represent how men had very little power when it came to regeneration in either plants or humans. There have also been debates on what

6241-653: Was written by Romaniote and Constantinopolitan Karaite Jews using the Hebrew Alphabet . In a tradition, that in modern time, has come to be known as Greek Aljamiado , some Greek Muslims from Crete wrote their Cretan Greek in the Arabic alphabet . The same happened among Epirote Muslims in Ioannina . This also happened among Arabic-speaking Byzantine rite Christians in the Levant ( Lebanon , Palestine, and Syria ). This usage

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