87-570: Aléria ( French pronunciation: [aleʁja] ; Ancient Greek : Ἀλαλίη / Ἀλλαλία , Alalíē/Allalía ; Latin and Italian : Aleria ; Corsican : U Cateraghju ) is a commune in the Haute-Corse department of France on the island of Corsica , former bishopric and present Latin Catholic titular see . It includes the easternmost point in Metropolitan France . Aléria shares
174-537: A pitch accent . In Modern Greek, all vowels and consonants are short. Many vowels and diphthongs once pronounced distinctly are pronounced as /i/ ( iotacism ). Some of the stops and glides in diphthongs have become fricatives , and the pitch accent has changed to a stress accent . Many of the changes took place in the Koine Greek period. The writing system of Modern Greek, however, does not reflect all pronunciation changes. The examples below represent Attic Greek in
261-508: A Cadmeian victory (his equivalent of a Pyrrhic victory ) because the Greeks lost 40 ships sunk and the remaining 20 so damaged as not to be battle-worthy. Now unable to defend themselves, the Phocaeans took to their remaining ships and sailed off to Rhegium , abandoning Alalíē . The Etruscans landed the numerous Phocaean prisoners and executed them by stoning, leaving the bodies where they lay until
348-444: A Persian subject, and it may be that the young Herodotus heard local eyewitness accounts of events within the empire and of Persian preparations for the invasion of Greece , including the movements of the local fleet under the command of Artemisia I of Caria . Inscriptions recently discovered at Halicarnassus indicate that Artemesia's grandson Lygdamis negotiated with a local assembly to settle disputes over seized property, which
435-398: A better harbor. Diodorus says that the cities of Corsica were subject to the Phocaeans and that the latter took slaves, resin, wax and honey from them. Alalíē was then an emporium . Of the natives whom the Phocaeans subjugated Diodorus says only that they were "barbarians, whose language is very strange and difficult to understand" and that they numbered more than 30,000. At home Phocaea
522-473: A boy living on the island of Samos, to which he had fled with his family from the oppressions of Lygdamis, tyrant of Halicarnassus and grandson of Artemisia. Panyassis , the epic poet related to Herodotus, is reported to have taken part in a failed uprising. The Suda also states that Herodotus later returned home to lead the revolt that eventually overthrew the tyrant. Due to recent discoveries of inscriptions at Halicarnassus dated to about Herodotus's time, it
609-597: A historical topic more in keeping with the Greek world-view: focused on the context of the polis or city-state. The interplay of civilizations was more relevant to Greeks living in Anatolia, such as Herodotus himself, for whom life within a foreign civilization was a recent memory. Before the Persian crisis, history had been represented among the Greeks only by local or family traditions. The "Wars of Liberation" had given to Herodotus
696-472: A lack of contemporaneous evidence. Several theories exist about what Hellenic dialect groups may have existed between the divergence of early Greek-like speech from the common Proto-Indo-European language and the Classical period. They have the same general outline but differ in some of the detail. The only attested dialect from this period is Mycenaean Greek , but its relationship to the historical dialects and
783-419: A lesser degree. Pamphylian Greek , spoken in a small area on the southwestern coast of Anatolia 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. Regarding the speech of the ancient Macedonians diverse theories have been put forward, but the epigraphic activity and the archaeological discoveries in
870-404: A literary critic of Augustan Rome , listed seven predecessors of Herodotus, describing their works as simple unadorned accounts of their own and other cities and people, Greek or foreign, including popular legends, sometimes melodramatic and naïve, often charming – all traits that can be found in the work of Herodotus himself. Modern historians regard the chronology as uncertain, but according to
957-550: A location called Terrina about 2 kilometres (1.2 mi) from the Étang de Diane gives some information regarding pre-Roman habitation. The pit was excavated between 1975 and 1981 by G. Camps, who found four levels and named the site after the most important, Terrina IV. Terrina IV features a Middle Neolithic settlement in which the use of cattle and pigs were, in contrast to the rest of the island, which kept mainly goats and sheep and grew grain. The Chalcolithic, approximately 3500–3000 BC, arrived by easy transition. The population of
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#17328454953501044-461: A number of villages and monuments. Most of the rest of the island is precipitously mountainous. The eastern coastline is punctuated by a number of lakes connecting (but not always) to the Tyrrhenian Sea , the remnant of an ancient system of lagoons behind barrier beaches . The Corsicans refer to them under the name of Étang, "pool", although most are larger by far than an English pool. Marshland
1131-495: A prefix /e-/, called the augment . This was probably originally a separate word, meaning something like "then", added because tenses in PIE had primarily aspectual meaning. The augment is added to the indicative of the aorist, imperfect, and pluperfect, but not to any of the other forms of the aorist (no other forms of the imperfect and pluperfect exist). The two kinds of augment in Greek are syllabic and quantitative. The syllabic augment
1218-432: A title conferred on him by the ancient Roman orator Cicero , and the " Father of Lies " by others. The Histories primarily cover the lives of prominent kings and famous battles such as Marathon , Thermopylae , Artemisium , Salamis , Plataea , and Mycale . His work deviates from the main topics to provide a cultural, ethnographical , geographical, and historiographical background that forms an essential part of
1305-680: A version of the Histories written by "Herodotus of Thurium", and some passages in the Histories have been interpreted as proof that he wrote about Magna Graecia from personal experience there (IV, 15,99; VI, 127). According to Ptolemaeus Chennus , a late source summarized in the Library of Photius , Plesirrhous the Thessalian, the hymnographer, was the eromenos of Herodotus and his heir. This account has also led some historians to assume Herodotus died childless. Intimate knowledge of some events in
1392-467: A view of an island that has been occupied continuously since about 6500 BC and has never been isolated. It was common for populations on Corsica to maintain contacts (especially trade contacts) with other communities on the Mediterranean; the indigenous people of Corsica therefore might have come from anywhere on the Mediterranean. The various archaeological museums on the island preserve ample remains from
1479-510: A vowel or /n s r/ ; final stops were lost, as in γάλα "milk", compared with γάλακτος "of milk" (genitive). Ancient Greek of the classical period also differed in both the inventory and distribution of original PIE phonemes due to numerous sound changes, notably the following: The pronunciation of Ancient Greek was very different from that of Modern Greek . Ancient Greek had long and short vowels ; many diphthongs ; double and single consonants; voiced, voiceless, and aspirated stops ; and
1566-487: A wider sense. There were several regional dialects of Ancient Greek; Attic Greek developed into Koine. Ancient Greek was a pluricentric language , divided into many dialects. The main dialect groups are Attic and Ionic , Aeolic , Arcadocypriot , and Doric , many of them with several subdivisions. Some dialects are found in standardized literary forms in literature , while others are attested only in inscriptions. There are also several historical forms. Homeric Greek
1653-510: A young Thucydides happened to be in the assembly with his father, and burst into tears during the recital. Herodotus observed prophetically to the boy's father: "Your son's soul yearns for knowledge." Eventually, Thucydides and Herodotus became close enough for both to be interred in Thucydides's tomb in Athens. Such at least was the opinion of Marcellinus in his Life of Thucydides . According to
1740-556: Is a literary form of Archaic Greek (derived primarily from Ionic and Aeolic) used in the epic poems , the Iliad and the Odyssey , and in later poems by other authors. Homeric Greek had significant differences in grammar and pronunciation from Classical Attic and other Classical-era dialects. The origins, early form and development of the Hellenic language family are not well understood because of
1827-418: 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, or that of the letter w , which affected
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#17328454953501914-423: Is also extensive on the coast requiring that cities be built inland from it. Malaria has historically been a problem near the marshlands and swamps of eastern Corsica. The fine barrier beaches are a recreational attraction. The Tavignano River (Tavignanu) enters the commune to the northwest and exits into the Tyrrhenian Sea . Its lands include a delta, marshes to the south and the unconnected Étang de Diane to
2001-644: Is called 'East Greek'. Arcadocypriot apparently descended more closely from the Mycenaean Greek of the Bronze Age. Boeotian Greek had come under a strong Northwest Greek influence, and can in some respects be considered a transitional dialect, as exemplified in the poems of the Boeotian poet Pindar who wrote in Doric with a small Aeolic admixture. Thessalian likewise had come under Northwest Greek influence, though to
2088-448: Is considered by some linguists to have been closely related to Greek . Among Indo-European branches with living descendants, Greek is often argued to have the closest genetic ties with Armenian (see also Graeco-Armenian ) and Indo-Iranian languages (see Graeco-Aryan ). Ancient Greek differs from Proto-Indo-European (PIE) and other Indo-European languages in certain ways. In phonotactics , ancient Greek words could end only in
2175-618: Is consistent with a tyrant under pressure. His name is not mentioned later in the tribute list of the Athenian Delian League , indicating that there might well have been a successful uprising against him some time before 454 BC. Herodotus wrote his Histories in the Ionian dialect , in spite of being born in a Dorian settlement. According to the Suda , Herodotus learned the Ionian dialect as
2262-486: Is generally assumed that he died not long afterwards, possibly before his sixtieth year. Herodotus would have made his researches known to the larger world through oral recitations to a public crowd. John Marincola writes in his introduction to the Penguin edition of the Histories that there are certain identifiable pieces in the early books of Herodotus's work which could be labeled as "performance pieces". These portions of
2349-794: Is now known that the Ionic dialect was used in Halicarnassus in some official documents, so there is no need to assume (like the Suda ) that he must have learned the dialect elsewhere. The Suda is the only source placing Herodotus as the heroic liberator of his birthplace, casting doubt upon the veracity of that romantic account. As Herodotus himself reveals, Halicarnassus, though a Dorian city, had ended its close relations with its Dorian neighbours after an unseemly quarrel (I, 144), and it had helped pioneer Greek trade with Egypt (II, 178). It was, therefore, an outward-looking, international-minded port within
2436-602: Is on account of the many strange stories and the folk-tales he reported that his critics have branded him "The Father of Lies". Even his own contemporaries found reason to scoff at his achievement. In fact, one modern scholar has wondered whether Herodotus left his home in Greek Anatolia , migrating westwards to Athens and beyond, because his own countrymen had ridiculed his work, a circumstance possibly hinted at in an epitaph said to have been dedicated to Herodotus at one of his three supposed resting places, Thuria : Herodotus
2523-456: Is some evidence that Corsica was being converted to Christianity in the late 6th century. Pope Gregory the Great wrote in 597 to Bishop Peter of Alaria to recover lapsed converts and to convert more pagans from the worship of trees and stones. He sent him money for baptismal robes . In 601, however, Aleria was without a bishop (see under Ajaccio ). Aleria was a residential diocese, suffragan of
2610-524: The Alcmaeonids , a clan whose history is featured frequently in his writing. According to Plutarch , Herodotus was granted a financial reward by the Athenian assembly in recognition of his work. Plutarch, using Diyllus as a source, says this was 10 talents . In 443 BC or shortly afterwards, he migrated to Thurii , in modern Calabria , as part of an Athenian-sponsored colony . Aristotle refers to
2697-658: The Archaic or Epic period ( c. 800–500 BC ), and the Classical period ( c. 500–300 BC ). Ancient Greek was the language of Homer and of fifth-century Athenian historians, playwrights, and philosophers . It has contributed many words to English vocabulary and has been a standard subject of study in educational institutions of the Western world since the Renaissance . This article primarily contains information about
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2784-562: The Byzantine Suda , an 11th-century encyclopedia which possibly took its information from traditional accounts. Still, the challenge is great: The data are so few – they rest upon such late and slight authority; they are so improbable or so contradictory, that to compile them into a biography is like building a house of cards, which the first breath of criticism will blow to the ground. Still, certain points may be approximately fixed ... Herodotus was, according to his own statement, at
2871-537: The Epic and Classical periods of the language, which are the best-attested periods and considered most typical of Ancient Greek. From the Hellenistic period ( c. 300 BC ), Ancient Greek was followed by Koine Greek , which is regarded as a separate historical stage, though its earliest form closely resembles Attic Greek , and its latest form approaches Medieval Greek , and Koine may be classified as Ancient Greek in
2958-614: The Etruscans . Syracusium can only be the Étang de Diane, a lake exiting to the Tyrrhenian Sea . As Aleria and Nicaea were trade rivals it seems unlikely that the Etruscans would have allowed the Phocaeans, who were ancient Greeks , access to Étang de Diane. Nicaea is generally identified with the La Marana district further north, where the Romans later built a city, Mariana, on the Étang de Biguglia ,
3045-486: The Euphrates to Babylon . For some reason, possibly associated with local politics, he subsequently found himself unpopular in Halicarnassus, and sometime around 447 BC, migrated to Periclean Athens – a city whose people and democratic institutions he openly admired (V, 78). Athens was also the place where he came to know the local topography (VI, 137; VIII, 52–55), as well as leading citizens such as
3132-745: The Greek region of Macedonia during the last decades has brought to light documents, among which the first texts written in Macedonian , such as the Pella curse tablet , as Hatzopoulos and other scholars note. Based on the conclusions drawn by several studies and findings such as Pella curse tablet , Emilio Crespo and other scholars suggest that ancient Macedonian was a Northwest Doric dialect , which shares isoglosses with its neighboring Thessalian dialects spoken in northeastern Thessaly . Some have also suggested an Aeolic Greek classification. The Lesbian dialect
3219-576: The Neolithic , Chalcolithic , Bronze Age and Iron Age , with some interpretive or circumstantial variation in the dates. Only in the Iron Age (700 BC-) were there any historians to distinguish between the indigenes descending from previous populations and the more recent colonists. Although no settlements of urban density preceded the first Greek colony, Aléria is unlikely to have been altogether unpopulated. A chance find of an ancient rubbish disposal pit at
3306-759: The Peloponnesian War on the abduction of some prostitutes – a mocking reference to Herodotus, who reported the Persians' account of their wars with Greece , beginning with the rapes of the mythical heroines Io , Europa , Medea , and Helen . Similarly, the Athenian historian Thucydides dismissed Herodotus as a story-teller. Thucydides, who had been trained in rhetoric , became the model for subsequent prose-writers as an author who seeks to appear firmly in control of his material, whereas with his frequent digressions Herodotus appeared to minimize (or possibly disguise) his authorial control. Moreover, Thucydides developed
3393-565: The Persian Empire , and the historian's family could well have had contacts in other countries under Persian rule, facilitating his travels and his researches. Herodotus's eyewitness accounts indicate that he traveled in Egypt in association with Athenians, probably sometime after 454 BC or possibly earlier, after an Athenian fleet had assisted the uprising against Persian rule in 460–454 BC. He probably traveled to Tyre next and then down
3480-569: The Suda , he was buried in Macedonian Pella and in the agora in Thurii. Herodotus announced the purpose and scope of his work at the beginning of his Histories: Here are presented the results of the inquiry carried out by Herodotus of Halicarnassus. The purpose is to prevent the traces of human events from being erased by time, and to preserve the fame of the important and remarkable achievements produced by both Greeks and non-Greeks; among
3567-501: The present , future , and imperfect are imperfective in aspect; the aorist , present perfect , pluperfect and future perfect are perfective in aspect. 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. The infinitives and participles correspond to the finite combinations of tense, aspect, and voice. The indicative of past tenses adds (conceptually, at least)
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3654-573: The 1st century BC. A pre-Roman, Etruscan necropolis was then discovered 500 metres (1,600 ft) to the south (in Casabianda) containing more than 200 tombs. It was excavated between 1960 and 1981. The necropolis had been in use mainly from the 6th to the 3rd centuries BC and was abandoned altogether with the construction of the Roman city, which had a cemetery to the north. No artifacts that were identifiably Etruscan have been found to have been from before
3741-1031: The 5th century BC. Ancient pronunciation cannot be reconstructed with certainty, but Greek from the period is well documented, and there is little disagreement among linguists as to the general nature of the sounds that the letters represent. /oː/ raised to [uː] , probably by the 4th century BC. 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 ) and 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"):
3828-572: The 6th century BC; that is, the Etruscans were most likely intrusive at that time. Systematic excavation since 1955 has revealed wide-ranging contacts in the 6th century BC, through pottery shards in test pits, with Ionian , Phocaean , Rhodian and Attic black-figure ware . The excavated necropolis of Casabianda's rock-cut tombs have revealed treasures and goods, left or placed with the buried, that include fine works of art, jewels, weapons, metalware, bronze and ceramic plates and dishes in particular, rhytons , distinctive kraters decorated by some of
3915-490: The Archaic period of ancient Greek (see Homeric Greek for more details): Μῆνιν ἄειδε, θεά, Πηληϊάδεω Ἀχιλῆος οὐλομένην, ἣ μυρί' Ἀχαιοῖς ἄλγε' ἔθηκε, πολλὰς δ' ἰφθίμους ψυχὰς Ἄϊδι προΐαψεν ἡρώων, αὐτοὺς δὲ ἑλώρια τεῦχε κύνεσσιν οἰωνοῖσί τε πᾶσι· Διὸς δ' ἐτελείετο βουλή· ἐξ οὗ δὴ τὰ πρῶτα διαστήτην ἐρίσαντε Ἀτρεΐδης τε ἄναξ ἀνδρῶν καὶ δῖος Ἀχιλλεύς. The beginning of Apology by Plato exemplifies Attic Greek from
4002-554: The Classical period of ancient Greek. (The second line is the IPA , the third is transliterated into the Latin alphabet using a modern version of the Erasmian scheme .) Ὅτι [hóti Hóti μὲν men mèn ὑμεῖς, hyːmêːs hūmeîs, Herodotus Herodotus ( Ancient Greek : Ἡρόδοτος , romanized : Hēródotos ; c. 484 – c. 425 BC)
4089-584: The Corsican Etruscans had still been cooperating with the Carthaginians. Not including them, the island was divided into 32 states. The Etruscans continued to use the necropolis. Subsequently, the Etruscan population must have assimilated to a new Roman population in parallel with the assimilation of Etruscans on the mainland. The Etruscan language disappeared and it must have been starting from that time that
4176-402: The Etruscans took the district, after its abandonment by the Greeks, they settled further south along N198 in the vicinity of the village of Aléria, today primarily an archaeological site across the river from Cateraggio, where visitors and academics are quartered. Still south of there was the Etruscan necropolis , in today's Casabianda. Aléria takes its name from the Roman town placed there after
4263-789: The Metropolitan Archdiocese of Pisa , which became a dogal state in Italy. It counted among its bishops Saint Alexander Sauli . On 29 November 1801, in accordance with the Napoleontic Concordat of 1801 , it was suppressed as the territory of the diocese of Ajaccio was extended to the whole of Corsica. At the end of the Ancien Régime , the bishop no longer lived in Aléria, but in Cervione . Hundreds of archaeological sites on Corsica offer
4350-563: The Rotanus River and Diana Harbor. He lists the "native races" inhabiting the island, but their geographical coordinates do not match those of Aleria; perhaps the Roman town was not considered among them. In the later Roman Empire , the port and the city declined. It never recovered from a disastrous fire of 410 AD and in 465 was sacked by the Vandals . Subsequently, it became a small village of no interest to any major power. These events must mark
4437-552: The abandonment of Phocaea in Ionia , that is, in 566 BC, Phocaeans colonizing the western Mediterranean founded a city, Alalíē , on the island of Cyrnus ( Corsica ). Diodorus Siculus says that the city was named Calaris, possibly a corruption of Alalíē . The historical circumstances of Calaris leave no doubt that it was Aleria. Diodorus says that Aleria had a "beautiful large harbor, called Syracusium," that Calaris and another city, Nicaea, were on it, and that Nicaea had been built by
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#17328454953504524-407: The ancient account, these predecessors included Dionysius of Miletus , Charon of Lampsacus, Hellanicus of Lesbos , Xanthus of Lydia and, the best attested of them all, Hecataeus of Miletus . Of these, only fragments of Hecataeus's works survived, and the authenticity of these is debatable, but they provide a glimpse into the kind of tradition within which Herodotus wrote his own Histories . It
4611-550: 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. Almost all forms of the perfect, pluperfect, and future perfect reduplicate the initial syllable of the verb stem. (A few irregular forms of perfect do not reduplicate, whereas a handful of irregular aorists reduplicate.) The three types of reduplication are: Irregular duplication can be understood diachronically. For example, lambanō (root lab ) has
4698-579: The audience. It was conventional in Herodotus's day for authors to "publish" their works by reciting them at popular festivals. According to Lucian , Herodotus took his finished work straight from Anatolia to the Olympic Games and read the entire Histories to the assembled spectators in one sitting, receiving rapturous applause at the end of it. According to a very different account by an ancient grammarian, Herodotus refused to begin reading his work at
4785-419: The augment when it was word-initial. In verbs with a preposition as a prefix, the augment is placed not at the start of the word, but between the preposition and the original verb. For example, προσ(-)βάλλω (I attack) goes to προσ έ βαλoν in the aorist. However compound verbs consisting of a prefix that is not a preposition retain the augment at the start of the word: αὐτο(-)μολῶ goes to ηὐ τομόλησα in
4872-453: The beginning of his work, a native of Halicarnassus in Anatolia , and it is generally accepted that he was born there around 485 BC. The Suda says his family was influential, that he was the son of Lyxes and Dryo and the brother of Theodorus, and that he was also related to Panyassis – an epic poet of the time. Halicarnassus was then within the Persian Empire , making Herodotus
4959-534: The canton of Moïta-Verde with 13 other communes: Moïta , Ampriani , Campi , Canale-di-Verde , Chiatra , Linguizzetta , Matra , Pianello , Pietra-di-Verde , Tallone , Tox , Zalana and Zuani . Aléria is 70 km (43 mi) to the south of Bastia on Route N198, in the centre of the Plaine Orientale, also called the Plaine d'Aléria, the east-central coastal plain of the island facing Italy . It includes
5046-438: 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. Arcadocypriot, or Aeolic and Arcado-Cypriot vs. Ionic-Attic. Often non-West
5133-648: The defeat of the Etruscans. The entire district, however, is wider still, following the Corsican custom of including some mountains and some beaches in every district. It incorporates the agricultural lands of Teppe Rosse (to the west), the entire Étang de Diane and the Plage de Padulone 3 km (2 mi) east of Cateraggio, a former barrier beach. Since 1975 a series of laws have created the Casabianda-Aléria Nature Preserve, 1,748 ha (4,320 acres) between
5220-563: The dialect of Sparta ), and Northern Peloponnesus Doric (including Corinthian ). 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. After the conquests of Alexander the Great in the late 4th century 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
5307-648: The end of its classical antiquity. It was buried bit by bit by the Tavignano and the Tagnone rivers, which also created the deadly marshes. The region became subsumed under a Christian parish. In the 13th century, Aleria became of interest to the Republic of Genoa . By that time the Latin language was gone, but it had developed into Corsu on Corsica, in parallel with the development of other Romance languages . The commune of Aléria
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#17328454953505394-591: The entire Persian garrison. At this success half the Phocaeans reinhabited Phocaea; the other half settled in the vicinity of Alalíē . In Corsica they were so troublesome to the Etruscans and to the Carthaginians of Sardinia that the two powers sent a combined fleet of 120 ships to root them out, but this force was defeated by 60 Phocaean ships at the Battle of Alalia in the Sardinian Sea, which Herodotus describes as
5481-439: The festival of Olympia until some clouds offered him a bit of shade – by which time the assembly had dispersed. (Hence the proverbial expression "Herodotus and his shade" to describe someone who misses an opportunity through delay.) Herodotus's recitation at Olympia was a favourite theme among ancient writers, and there is another interesting variation on the story to be found in the Suda : that of Photius and Tzetzes , in which
5568-422: The first genuinely historical inspiration felt by a Greek. These wars showed him that there was a corporate life, higher than that of the city, of which the story might be told; and they offered to him as a subject the drama of the collision between East and West. With him, the spirit of history was born into Greece; and his work, called after the nine Muses, was indeed the first utterance of Clio . Though Herodotus
5655-592: The first rank Attic vase-painters. Portable antiquities found in the Aléria commune are presented for public viewing in the Musée Jérôme Carcopino in Fort Matra in the village of Aléria. L'étang de Diane occupies 600 hectares (1,500 acres); in it, the île des Pêcheurs ("Fishermans' Island") features a large mound of oyster shells accumulated from Roman times, when removed from their shells, salted oysters were exported to Rome. A company has revived with success
5742-500: The first years of the Peloponnesian War (VI, 91; VII, 133, 233; IX, 73) suggests that he returned to Athens, in which case it is possible that he died there during an outbreak of the plague. It is also possible he died in Macedonia instead, after obtaining the patronage of the court there; or else he died back in Thurii. There is nothing in the Histories that can be dated to later than 430 BC with any certainty, and it
5829-556: The historical Dorians . 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 Greeks of this period believed there were three major divisions of all 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 Cypriot, far from
5916-472: The historical circumstances of the times imply that the overall groups already existed in some form. Scholars assume that major Ancient Greek period dialect groups developed not later than 1120 BC, at the time of the Dorian invasions —and that 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
6003-490: The island began to acquire its Latin language . Under the late Roman Republic the Romans decided to build a major naval base on the shores of Étang de Diane. Starting in 80 BC under Sulla as dictator they rebuilt the city on the promontory at Aléria, naming it Aleria. The city rose to prominence under Augustus , becoming the provincial capital of Corsica. Major fleets were stationed on the étang. Ptolemy mentions it but says little about it, only mentioning "Aleria Colonia",
6090-424: The matters covered is, in particular, the cause of the hostilities between Greeks and non-Greeks. His record of the achievements of others was an achievement in itself, though the extent of it has been debated. Herodotus's place in history and his significance may be understood according to the traditions within which he worked. His work is the earliest Greek prose to have survived intact. Dionysius of Halicarnassus ,
6177-512: The mouth of the Tavignanu and the Étang d'Urbinu, which is 5 km (3 mi) to the south. The reserve to the south was initiated from the grounds of the former penitentiary of Casabianda in 1951. It was instituted in 1880 in a then pestilential area which it was hoped the prisoners could farm. It contained 1800 ha and 214 plots. Due to a high death rate from malaria, the agricultural experiment failed. According to Herodotus twenty years before
6264-612: The narrative and provides readers with a wellspring of additional information. Herodotus was criticized in ancient times for his inclusion of "legends and fanciful accounts" in his work. The contemporaneous historian Thucydides accused him of making up stories for entertainment. He retorted that he reported what he could see and was told. A sizable portion of the Histories has since been confirmed by modern historians and archaeologists . Modern scholars generally turn to Herodotus's own writing for reliable information about his life, supplemented with ancient yet much later sources, such as
6351-466: The north. To the west, the étang de Terre Rosse is a lake and reservoir used to irrigate the plain. Corsica had an indigenous population in the Neolithic and the Bronze Age but the east coast was subject to colonization by Mediterranean maritime powers: Greeks, Etruscans, Carthaginians, Romans. They typically built on an étang, which they used as a harbor. Alalíē ( Ionic dialect ) was placed between
6438-499: The older dialects, although the Doric dialect has survived in the Tsakonian language , which is spoken in the region of modern Sparta. Doric has also passed down its aorist terminations into most verbs of Demotic Greek . By about the 6th century AD, the Koine had slowly metamorphosed into Medieval Greek . Phrygian is an extinct Indo-European language of West and Central Anatolia , which
6525-453: The oracle compelled a proper burial. As the Carthaginians were not then interested in Corsica, the Etruscans occupied Alalíē and took over dominion of the island, which they held until the Romans took it from them. The Etruscans and perhaps others in their turn occupied Alalia. There is no evidence of any other impact of theirs on the island or the indigenous population; the east coast location
6612-487: The perfect stem eilēpha (not * lelēpha ) because it was originally slambanō , with perfect seslēpha , becoming eilēpha through compensatory lengthening. 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 stop appears after the reduplication in some verbs. The earliest extant examples of ancient Greek writing ( c. 1450 BC ) are in
6699-474: The production of molluscs in the étang. In the commune, grapes and citrus fruits are commonly grown. Ancient Greek Ancient Greek ( Ἑλληνῐκή , Hellēnikḗ ; [hellɛːnikɛ́ː] ) includes the forms of the Greek language used in ancient Greece and the ancient world from around 1500 BC to 300 BC. It is often roughly divided into the following periods: Mycenaean Greek ( c. 1400–1200 BC ), Dark Ages ( c. 1200–800 BC ),
6786-468: The research seem independent and "almost detachable", so that they might have been set aside by the author for the purposes of an oral performance. The intellectual matrix of the 5th century, Marincola suggests, comprised many oral performances in which philosophers would dramatically recite such detachable pieces of their work. The idea was to criticize previous arguments on a topic and emphatically and enthusiastically insert their own in order to win over
6873-460: The site manufactured arsenical copper and copper goods. The visible antique habitations at Aléria date to the Iron Age and are consistent with the common history. Although ruins on the promontory were noted by Prosper Mérimée in 1839, they were only excavated in 1955 by Jean Jehasse and Jean-Paul Boucher. By 1958 the excavators had uncovered the forum of the Roman city of Aleria, first occupied in
6960-470: The son of Sphynx lies; in Ionic history without peer; a Dorian born, who fled from slander's brand and made in Thuria his new native land. Yet it was in Athens where his most formidable contemporary critics could be found. In 425 BC, which is about the time that Herodotus is thought by many scholars to have died, the Athenian comic dramatist Aristophanes created The Acharnians , in which he blames
7047-534: The southern end of the 3.5 km (2.2 mi) long Ētang de Diane and the Tavignano River (the classical Rhotanos), slightly inland, but controlling the entire district including the mouth of the river. The site is partly occupied today by the village of Cateraggio (Corsican: U Cateraghju) at the crossroads of national routes N200 and N198. N200 follows the Vallé du Tavignano into the interior mountains of Corte . When
7134-517: The syllabic script Linear B . Beginning in the 8th century BC, however, the Greek alphabet became standard, albeit 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. The beginning of Homer 's Iliad exemplifies
7221-475: Was Aeolic. For example, fragments of the works of the poet Sappho from the island of Lesbos are in Aeolian. 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 ,
7308-511: Was a Greek historian and geographer from the Greek city of Halicarnassus , part of the Persian Empire (now Bodrum , Turkey) and a later citizen of Thurii in modern Calabria , Italy. He wrote the Histories , a detailed account of the Greco-Persian Wars , and was the first writer to apply a scientific method to historical events. He has been described as " The Father of History ",
7395-451: Was created in 1824, but it did not truly begin to revive until after 1945, after the allies (chiefly American) had undertaken to eradicate malaria (1944). An organization, SOMIVAC (Société d'aménagement pour la mise en valeur de la Corse) was created in 1957 to resurrect agriculturally the entire eastern plain under government sponsorship. It had great success in developing the region. A massive archaeological effort got underway in 1955. There
7482-491: Was simply fortuitous for them. Across the waters, however, rose a power that eventually dominated the entire island and had a lasting impact, changing the language. Alalíē was occupied by the Romans during the First Punic War in 259 BC. Florus says that Lucius Cornelius Scipio destroyed it and cleared the region of Carthaginians while Pliny adds that Sulla much later placed two colonies, Aleria and Mariana. Evidently
7569-414: Was the first city of Ionia to come under siege by the army of Cyrus , who were Medes commanded by Harpagus , in 546 BC. Requesting a cease-fire the Phocaeans took to their ships, abandoning the city to Harpagus, who allowed them to escape. Refused permission to settle Oenussae in the territory of Chios they resolved to reinforce Alalíē , but first made a surprise punitive raid on Phocaea, executing
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