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166-545: The legendary beginnings of Thonis go back to as early as the 12th century BC, and it is mentioned by ancient Greek historians. Its importance grew particularly during the waning days of the pharaohs . Thonis was originally built on some adjoining islands in the Nile Delta . The city was built around a central temple, and was intersected by canals with a number of harbors and anchorages. Its wharves, temples, and tower-houses were linked by ferries, bridges, and pontoons. The city

332-402: A baris , a type of ancient Nile river boat, was excavated from the waters of Thonis-Heracleion. Its design was found to be consistent with a description written by Herodotus in 450 BC. The quick destruction of the buildings and slow submersion of Thonis-Heracleion allows archaeologists to now study the underwater city with its surplus of archaeological evidence. One of the most important remains

498-471: A Greek state. Herodotus gave a famous account of what defined Greek (Hellenic) ethnic identity in his day, enumerating By Western standards, the term Greeks has traditionally referred to any native speakers of the Greek language , whether Mycenaean , Byzantine or modern Greek . Byzantine Greeks self-identified as Romaioi ("Romans"), Graikoi ("Greeks") and Christianoi ("Christians") since they were

664-407: A Trojan prince, came to Sparta to claim Helen, in the guise of a supposed diplomatic mission. Before this journey, Paris had been appointed by Zeus to judge the most beautiful goddess ; Hera , Athena , or Aphrodite . In order to earn his favour, Aphrodite promised Paris the most beautiful woman in the world. Swayed by Aphrodite's offer, Paris chose her as the most beautiful of the goddesses, earning

830-518: A bio-genetic affinity and continuity shared between both groups. There is also a direct genetic link between ancient Greeks and modern Greeks. Today, Greeks are the majority ethnic group in the Hellenic Republic , where they constitute 93% of the country's population, and the Republic of Cyprus where they make up 78% of the island's population (excluding Turkish settlers in the occupied part of

996-713: A break during the Greek Dark Ages from which written records are absent (11th- 8th cent. BC, though the Cypriot syllabary was in use during this period). Scholars compare its continuity of tradition to Chinese alone. Since its inception, Hellenism was primarily a matter of common culture and the national continuity of the Greek world is a lot more certain than its demographic. Yet, Hellenism also embodied an ancestral dimension through aspects of Athenian literature that developed and influenced ideas of descent based on autochthony. During

1162-517: A common Greek identity. In the historical period, Herodotus identified the Achaeans of the northern Peloponnese as descendants of the earlier, Homeric Achaeans. Homer refers to the "Hellenes" ( / ˈ h ɛ l iː n z / ) as a relatively small tribe settled in Thessalic Phthia , with its warriors under the command of Achilleus . The Parian Chronicle says that Phthia was the homeland of

1328-600: A daughter also called Helen . The three sons died during the Trojan War when an earthquake caused the roof of the room where they slept to collapse. In most sources, including the Iliad and the Odyssey , Helen is the daughter of Zeus and of Leda , the wife of the Spartan king Tyndareus . Euripides ' play Helen , written in the late 5th century BC, is the earliest source to report

1494-433: A daughter, Hermione , and (according to some myths) three sons: Aethiolas , Maraphius, and Pleisthenes . The marriage of Helen and Menelaus marks the beginning of the end of the age of heroes. Concluding the catalog of Helen's suitors, Hesiod reports Zeus' plan to obliterate the race of men and the heroes in particular. The Trojan War, caused by Helen's elopement with Paris, is going to be his means to this end. Paris ,

1660-469: A death sentence. This version is contradicted by two of Euripides' other tragedies, Electra , which predates The Trojan Women, and Helen , as Helen is described as being in Egypt during the events of the Trojan War in each. From Antiquity, depicting Helen would be a remarkable challenge. The story of Zeuxis deals with this exact question: how would an artist immortalize ideal beauty? He eventually selected

1826-787: A derogatory exonym for the Byzantines who barely used it, mostly in contexts relating to the West, such as texts relating to the Council of Florence , to present the Western viewpoint. Additionally, among the Germanic and the Slavic peoples, the Rhōmaîoi were just called Greeks. There are three schools of thought regarding this Byzantine Roman identity in contemporary Byzantine scholarship : The first considers "Romanity"

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1992-489: A direct consequence of this situation, Greek-speakers came to play a hugely important role in the Ottoman trading and diplomatic establishment, as well as in the church. Added to this, in the first half of the Ottoman period men of Greek origin made up a significant proportion of the Ottoman army, navy, and state bureaucracy, having been levied as adolescents (along with especially Albanians and Serbs ) into Ottoman service through

2158-507: A goose. Zeus also transformed himself into a goose and raped Nemesis, who produced an egg from which Helen was born. Presumably, in the Cypria , this egg was somehow transferred to Leda. Later sources state either that it was brought to Leda by a shepherd who discovered it in a grove in Attica , or that it was dropped into her lap by Hermes . Asclepiades of Tragilos and Pseudo-Eratosthenes related

2324-411: A harmonious married life—he holding no grudge at her having run away with a lover and she feeling no restraint in telling anecdotes of her life inside besieged Troy. According to another version, used by Euripides in his play Orestes , Helen had been saved by Apollo from Orestes and was taken up to Mount Olympus almost immediately after Menelaus' return. A curious fate is recounted by Pausanias

2490-402: A host of horsemen, others of infantry and others    of ships, is the most beautiful thing on the dark earth    but I say, it is what you love Full easy it is to make this understood of one and all: for    she that far surpassed all mortals in beauty, Helen her    most noble husband Deserted, and went sailing to Troy, with never

2656-503: A large temple of Khonsou , son of Amun , who was known to the Greeks as Herakles . Later, the worship of Amun became more prominent. During the time when the city especially flourished between the sixth and fourth centuries BC, a large temple of Amun-Gereb, the supreme god of the Egyptians at the time, was located in the middle of the city. King Nectanebo I made many additions to the temple in

2822-597: A law that allowed members of the diaspora to vote in Greek elections; this law was repealed in early 2014. In ancient times, the trading and colonizing activities of the Greek tribes and city states spread the Greek culture, religion and language around the Mediterranean and Black Sea basins, especially in Southern Italy (the so-called " Magna Graecia "), Spain, the south of France and the Black sea coasts . Under Alexander

2988-600: A lesser extent, other countries surrounding the Eastern Mediterranean and Black Sea . They also form a significant diaspora ( omogenia ), with many Greek communities established around the world. Greek colonies and communities have been historically established on the shores of the Mediterranean Sea and Black Sea , but the Greek people themselves have always been centered on the Aegean and Ionian seas, where

3154-609: A matter of course on being recruited through the devshirme —were to be found in Crete ( Cretan Turks ), Greek Macedonia (for example among the Vallahades of western Macedonia ), and among Pontic Greeks in the Pontic Alps and Armenian Highlands . Several Ottoman sultans and princes were also of part Greek origin, with mothers who were either Greek concubines or princesses from Byzantine noble families, one famous example being sultan Selim

3320-450: A nation in the meaning of an ethnos , defined by possessing Greek culture and having a Greek mother tongue , not by citizenship, race, and religion or by being subjects of any particular state. In ancient and medieval times and to some extent today the Greek term was genos , which also indicates a common ancestry. Greeks and Greek-speakers have used different names to refer to themselves collectively. The term Achaeans (Ἀχαιοί)

3486-564: A natural element. Helen first appears in the poems of Homer , after which she became a popular figure in Greek literature. These works are set in the final years of the Age of Heroes , a mythological era which features prominently in the canon of Greek myth. Because the Homeric poems are known to have been transmitted orally before being written down, some scholars speculate that such stories were passed down from earlier Mycenaean Greek tradition, and that

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3652-574: A new bride, but the Greeks refused to believe that Helen was in Egypt and not within Troy's walls. Thus, Helen waited in Memphis for ten years, while the Greeks and the Trojans fought. Following the conclusion of the Trojan War, Menelaus sailed to Memphis, where Proteus reunited him with Helen. When he discovered that his wife was missing, Menelaus called upon all the other suitors to fulfill their oaths, thus beginning

3818-609: A part of their historic homelands, Peloponnese , from the Ottoman Empire . The large Greek diaspora and merchant class were instrumental in transmitting the ideas of western romantic nationalism and philhellenism , which together with the conception of Hellenism, formulated during the last centuries of the Byzantine Empire , formed the basis of the Diafotismos and the current conception of Hellenism. The Greeks today are

3984-512: A procession on water. Before its discovery in 2000, most historians believed that Thonis and Heracleion were two separate cities, both located on what is now the Egyptian mainland. However, a second stele of the Decree of Nectanebo I was found at the temple of Heracleion, with an order from Nectanebo I stating that it be placed in the city of Thonis, proving that Thonis and Heracleion were actually one and

4150-508: A region of the Nile delta known as the Canopic mouth . Some of Paris' servants then fled to a nearby temple of Heracles that was built along the coast, and told the temple priests and Thonis, the watchman at the entrance to the Nile, of Paris' taking of Helen from Menelaus. Thonis then captured Paris and his ships, and brought Paris and Helen to Memphis to be judged by Proteus of Egypt . Alternatively it

4316-503: A seduction, whereas in Renaissance paintings it was usually depicted as a "rape" (i. e., abduction ) by Paris. Christopher Marlowe 's lines from his tragedy Doctor Faustus (1604) are frequently cited: "Was this the face that launched a thousand ships / And burnt the topless towers of Ilium?" The etymology of Helen's name continues to be a problem for scholars. In the 19th century, Georg Curtius related Helen ( Ἑλένη ) to

4482-411: A sense of religious and cultural difference and exclusion (the word barbarian was used by 12th-century historian Anna Komnene to describe non-Greek speakers), a sense of Greek identity and common sense of ethnicity despite the undeniable socio-political changes of the past two millennia. In recent anthropological studies, both ancient and modern Greek osteological samples were analyzed demonstrating

4648-408: A shrine with Menelaus. She was also worshiped in Attica and on Rhodes . Her beauty inspired artists of all times to represent her, frequently as the personification of ideal human beauty. Images of Helen start appearing in the 7th century BC. In classical Greece, her abduction by Paris—or escape with him—was a popular motif. In medieval illustrations, this event was frequently portrayed as

4814-402: A similar story, except that Zeus and Nemesis became swans instead of geese. Timothy Gantz has suggested that the tradition that Zeus came to Leda in the form of a swan derives from the version in which Zeus and Nemesis transformed into birds. Pausanias states that in the middle of the 2nd century AD, the remains of an egg-shell, tied up in ribbons, were still suspended from the roof of

4980-471: A temple on the Spartan acropolis. People believed that this was "the famous egg that legend says Leda brought forth". Pausanias traveled to Sparta to visit the sanctuary, dedicated to Hilaeira and Phoebe , in order to see the relic for himself. Pausanias also says that there was a local tradition that Helen's brothers, "the Dioscuri " (i.e. Castor and Pollux), were born on the island of Pefnos , adding that

5146-566: A third of the Greek population of the island in 1974, there was also an increase in the number of Greek Cypriots leaving, especially for the Middle East, which contributed to a decrease in population that tapered off in the 1990s. Today more than two-thirds of the Greek population in Cyprus is urban. Around 1990, most Western estimates of the number of ethnic Greeks in Albania were around 200,000 but in

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5312-416: A thought for    her daughter and dear parents. Dio Chrysostom gives a completely different account of the story, questioning Homer's credibility: after Agamemnon had married Helen's sister, Clytemnestra, Tyndareus sought Helen's hand for Menelaus for political reasons. However, Helen was sought by many suitors, who came from far and near, among them Paris who surpassed all the others and won

5478-578: A time spanning from the early 5th century BC to the death of Alexander the Great , in 323 BC (some authors prefer to split this period into "Classical", from the end of the Greco-Persian Wars to the end of the Peloponnesian War, and "Fourth Century", up to the death of Alexander). It is so named because it set the standards by which Greek civilization would be judged in later eras. The Classical period

5644-631: A treacherous Helen who simulated Bacchic rites and rejoiced in the carnage she caused. In some versions, Helen does not arrive in Troy, but instead waits out the war in Egypt . Ultimately, Paris was killed in action, and in Homer's account Helen was reunited with Menelaus, though other versions of the legend recount her ascending to Olympus instead. A cult associated with her developed in Hellenistic Laconia , both at Sparta and elsewhere; at Therapne she shared

5810-570: A tree, and for this reason the Rhodians have a sanctuary of Helen of the Tree." There are other traditions concerning the punishment of Helen. For example, she is offered as a sacrifice to the gods in Tauris by Iphigeneia , or Thetis , enraged when Achilles dies because of Helen, kills her on her return journey. Tlepolemus was a son of Heracles and Astyoche. Astyoche was a daughter of Phylas, King of Ephyra who

5976-473: A tumulus was discovered, covered with numerous offerings including wicker baskets containing fruits of the doum palm tree and grape seeds dating to the early 4th century BC, alongside a number of Greek ceramic some with black and red figures likely imported from Attica ; a wooden sofa used for banquets was also found, alongside a gold amulet of high quality. The artifacts were probably preserved within an underground room or buried soon after being offered, despite

6142-422: A wide range of items to study. A portion of the ceramic pieces were Greek in origin; this adds to the evidence of a large Greek population living at Thonis-Heracleion. The research at the site is still ongoing, and excavations are continuing every year. Goddio estimates that only 5% of the city has been excavated so far. The archaeologists are continuing to search for artifacts and remains of the city. Because there

6308-451: Is also described as the "Golden Age" of Greek civilization, and its art, philosophy, architecture and literature would be instrumental in the formation and development of Western culture. While the Greeks of the classical era understood themselves to belong to a common Hellenic genos , their first loyalty was to their city and they saw nothing incongruous about warring, often brutally, with other Greek city-states . The Peloponnesian War ,

6474-469: Is also mentioned in the twin steles of the Decree of Nectanebo I (the first of which is known as the 'Stele of Naukratis'), which specify that one tenth of the taxes on imports passing through the town of Thonis (Heracleion) were to be given to the ancient sanctuary of Neith of Sais . The city is also mentioned in the Decree of Canopus honoring Pharaoh Ptolemy III , which describes donations, sacrifices and

6640-462: Is an affectionate relationship between the two, and Helen has harsh words for Paris when she compares the two brothers: Howbeit, seeing the gods thus ordained these ills, would that I had been wife to a better man, that could feel the indignation of his fellows and their many revilings. [...] But come now, enter in, and sit thee upon this chair, my brother, since above all others has trouble encompassed thy heart because of shameless me, and

6806-459: Is likely that one of the factors which contributed to the Mycenaean palatial collapse was linked to raids by groups known in historiography as the " Sea Peoples " who sailed into the eastern Mediterranean around 1180 BC. The Dorian invasion was followed by a poorly attested period of migrations, appropriately called the Greek Dark Ages , but by 800 BC the landscape of Archaic and Classical Greece

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6972-501: Is not the case, however, in Laconic art: on an Archaic stele depicting Helen's recovery after the fall of Troy, Menelaus is armed with a sword but Helen faces him boldly, looking directly into his eyes; and in other works of Peloponnesian art, Helen is shown carrying a wreath, while Menelaus holds his sword aloft vertically. In contrast, on Athenian vases of c. 550–470, Menelaus threateningly points his sword at her. The abduction by Paris

7138-611: Is one of the collective names for the Greeks in Homer 's Iliad and Odyssey (the Homeric "long-haired Achaeans" would have been a part of the Mycenaean civilization that dominated Greece from c. 1600 BC until 1100 BC). The other common names are Danaans (Δαναοί) and Argives (Ἀργεῖοι) while Panhellenes (Πανέλληνες) and Hellenes (Ἕλληνες) both appear only once in the Iliad ; all of these terms were used, synonymously, to denote

7304-569: Is possibly derived from the Proto-Indo-European root *ǵerh₂- , "to grow old", more specifically from Graea (ancient city), said by Aristotle to be the oldest in Greece, and the source of colonists for the Naples area. The most obvious link between modern and ancient Greeks is their language, which has a documented tradition from at least the 14th century BC to the present day, albeit with

7470-482: Is presented as a young princess wrestling naked in the palaestra , alluding to a part of girls' physical education in classical (not Mycenaean) Sparta. Sextus Propertius imagines Helen as a girl who practices arms and hunts with her brothers: [...] or like Helen, on the sands of Eurotas, between Castor and Pollux, one to be victor in boxing, the other with horses: with naked breasts she carried weapons, they say, and did not blush with her divine brothers there. When it

7636-719: Is said to have aided the Dioscuri brothers in returning Helen home. In most accounts of this event, Helen was quite young; Hellanicus of Lesbos said she was seven years old and Diodorus makes her ten years old. On the other hand, Stesichorus said that Iphigenia was the daughter of Theseus and Helen, which implies that Helen was of childbearing age. In most sources, Iphigenia is the daughter of Agamemnon and Clytemnestra , but Duris of Samos and other writers, such as Antoninus Liberalis , followed Stesichorus' account. Ovid 's Heroides give us an idea of how ancient and, in particular, Roman authors imagined Helen in her youth: she

7802-484: Is so much left to excavate at Thonis-Heracleion, there is a lot of potential for new discoveries of important artifacts or more building remains. In July 2019, a tholos, small Greek temple , ancient granite columns, treasure-carrying ships, and bronze coins from the reign of Ptolemy II , dating back to the third and fourth centuries BC, were found at Thonis-Heracleion by IEASM , a team of Egyptian and European archeologists led by Goddio. In August 2021, IEASM announced

7968-565: Is the oldest recorded living language and its vocabulary has been the basis of many languages, including English as well as international scientific nomenclature . Greek was by far the most widely spoken lingua franca in the Mediterranean world since the fourth century BC and the New Testament of the Christian Bible was also originally written in Greek. The Greeks speak the Greek language , which forms its own unique branch within

8134-436: Is the stele that was found near the temple of Amun-Gereb. Written on the black, granodiorite stele is a decree of King Nectanebo I, which raises subsidies for the temple. This stele also confirms the name of the city as Thonis since the name of the city was written into the inscription. Until this point, archaeologists and historians had thought that Thonis and Heracleion were separate cities, but this discovery solidified that

8300-707: The Graikoi (Γραικοί) were named Hellenes. Aristotle notes in his Meteorologica that the Hellenes were related to the Graikoi. The English names Greece and Greek are derived, via the Latin Graecia and Graecus , from the name of the Graeci ( Γραικοί , Graikoí ; singular Γραικός , Graikós ), who were among the first ancient Greek tribes to settle southern Italy (the so-called " Magna Graecia "). The term

8466-537: The Iliad and the Odyssey ). Her story reappears in Book ;II of Virgil 's Aeneid . In her youth, she was abducted by Theseus . A competition between her suitors for her hand in marriage saw Menelaus emerge victorious. All of her suitors were required to swear an oath (known as the Oath of Tyndareus ) promising to provide military assistance to the winning suitor, if Helen were ever stolen from him. The obligations of

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8632-565: The 2nd millennium BC has to be reconstructed on the basis of the ancient Greek dialects , as they presented themselves centuries later and are therefore subject to some uncertainties. There were at least two migrations, the first being the Ionians and Achaeans , which resulted in Mycenaean Greece by the 16th century BC, and the second, the Dorian invasion , around the 11th century BC, displacing

8798-732: The Arcadocypriot dialects , which descended from the Mycenaean period. Both migrations occur at incisive periods, the Mycenaean at the transition to the Late Bronze Age and the Doric at the Bronze Age collapse . In c. 1600 BC, the Mycenaean Greeks borrowed from the Minoan civilization its syllabic writing system ( Linear A ) and developed their own syllabic script known as Linear B , providing

8964-566: The Byzantine Empire , a name not used during its own time ) became increasingly influenced by Greek culture after the 7th century when Emperor Heraclius ( r.   610–641 AD) decided to make Greek the empire's official language. Although the Catholic Church recognized the Eastern Empire's claim to the Roman legacy for several centuries, after Pope Leo III crowned Charlemagne , king of

9130-812: The Franks , as the " Roman Emperor " on 25 December 800, an act which eventually led to the formation of the Holy Roman Empire , the Latin West started to favour the Franks and began to refer to the Eastern Roman Empire largely as the Empire of the Greeks ( Imperium Graecorum ). While this Latin term for the ancient Hellenes could be used neutrally, its use by Westerners from the 9th century onwards in order to challenge Byzantine claims to ancient Roman heritage rendered it

9296-515: The Greek language has been spoken since the Bronze Age . Until the early 20th century, Greeks were distributed between the Greek peninsula , the western coast of Asia Minor , the Black Sea coast, Cappadocia in central Anatolia, Egypt , the Balkans , Cyprus, and Constantinople . Many of these regions coincided to a large extent with the borders of the Byzantine Empire of the late 11th century and

9462-415: The Indo-European family of languages, the Hellenic . They are part of a group of classical ethnicities, described by Anthony D. Smith as an "archetypal diaspora people". The Proto-Greeks probably arrived at the area now called Greece, in the southern tip of the Balkan peninsula , at the end of the 3rd millennium BC between 2200 and 1900 BC. The sequence of migrations into the Greek mainland during

9628-417: The Indo-Greek and Greco-Bactrian kingdoms, Greco-Buddhism was spreading and Greek missionaries would play an important role in propagating it to China . Further east, the Greeks of Alexandria Eschate became known to the Chinese people as the Dayuan . Between 168 BC and 30 BC, the entire Greek world was conquered by Rome, and almost all of the world's Greek speakers lived as citizens or subjects of

9794-490: The Italian Renaissance . The interest in the Classical Greek heritage was complemented by a renewed emphasis on Greek Orthodox identity, which was reinforced in the late Medieval and Ottoman Greeks' links with their fellow Orthodox Christians in the Russian Empire . These were further strengthened following the fall of the Empire of Trebizond in 1461, after which and until the second Russo-Turkish War of 1828–29 hundreds of thousands of Pontic Greeks fled or migrated from

9960-457: The Pontic Alps and Armenian Highlands to southern Russia and the Russian South Caucasus (see also Greeks in Russia , Greeks in Armenia , Greeks in Georgia , and Caucasian Greeks ). These Byzantine Greeks were largely responsible for the preservation of the literature of the classical era. Byzantine grammarians were those principally responsible for carrying, in person and in writing, ancient Greek grammatical and literary studies to

10126-429: The Roman Empire , they became secondary to religious considerations, and the renewed empire used Christianity as a tool to support its cohesion and promote a robust Roman national identity. From the early centuries of the Common Era , the Greeks self-identified as Romans ( Greek : Ῥωμαῖοι Rhōmaîoi ). By that time, the name Hellenes denoted pagans but was revived as an ethnonym in the 11th century. During most of

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10292-414: The Second World War (1939–1945), the Greek Civil War (1946–1949), and the Turkish Invasion of Cyprus in 1974. While official figures remain scarce, polls and anecdotal evidence point to renewed Greek emigration as a result of the Greek financial crisis . According to data published by the Federal Statistical Office of Germany in 2011, 23,800 Greeks emigrated to Germany, a significant increase over

10458-416: The Treaty of Lausanne was signed between Greece and Turkey in 1923, the two countries agreed to use religion as the determinant for ethnic identity for the purposes of population exchange, although most of the Greeks displaced (over a million of the total 1.5 million) had already been driven out by the time the agreement was signed. The Greek genocide , in particular the harsh removal of Pontian Greeks from

10624-401: The devshirme . Many Ottomans of Greek (or Albanian or Serb) origin were therefore to be found within the Ottoman forces which governed the provinces, from Ottoman Egypt, to Ottomans occupied Yemen and Algeria , frequently as provincial governors. For those that remained under the Ottoman Empire 's millet system , religion was the defining characteristic of national groups ( milletler ), so

10790-429: The exonym "Greeks" ( Rumlar from the name Rhomaioi) was applied by the Ottomans to all members of the Orthodox Church , regardless of their language or ethnic origin. The Greek speakers were the only ethnic group to actually call themselves Romioi , (as opposed to being so named by others) and, at least those educated, considered their ethnicity ( genos ) to be Hellenic. There were, however, many Greeks who escaped

10956-432: The lingua franca rather than Latin . The modern-day Griko community of southern Italy, numbering about 60,000, may represent a living remnant of the ancient Greek populations of Italy. During and after the Greek War of Independence , Greeks of the diaspora were important in establishing the fledgling state, raising funds and awareness abroad. Greek merchant families already had contacts in other countries and during

11122-430: The 1990s, a majority of them migrated to Greece. The Greek minority of Turkey , which numbered upwards of 200,000 people after the 1923 exchange, has now dwindled to a few thousand, after the 1955 Constantinople Pogrom and other state sponsored violence and discrimination. This effectively ended, though not entirely, the three-thousand-year-old presence of Hellenism in Asia Minor. There are smaller Greek minorities in

11288-410: The 2nd century BC, a major weather event, either a tsunami, earthquake, or a combination, pushed the city towards destruction. However, the city was not entirely abandoned until its complete submersion into the sea by the eighth century AD. Over time, the city was weakened by a combination of earthquakes, tsunamis, and rising sea levels . Around 101 BC, probably after a severe flood, the ground on which

11454-408: The 4th century, with some areas such as the southeastern Peloponnese remaining pagan until well into the mid-Byzantine 10th century AD. The region of Tsakonia remained pagan until the ninth century and as such its inhabitants were referred to as Hellenes , in the sense of being pagan, by their Christianized Greek brethren in mainstream Byzantine society. While ethnic distinctions still existed in

11620-423: The Age of Heroes may itself reflect a mythologized memory of that era. Recent archaeological excavations in Greece suggest that modern-day Laconia was a distinct territory in the Late Bronze Age , while the poets narrate that it was a rich kingdom. Archaeologists have unsuccessfully looked for a Mycenaean palatial complex buried beneath present-day Sparta. Modern findings suggest the area around Menelaion in

11786-463: The Caucasus and southern Russia and Ukraine and in the Greek diaspora communities in a number of other countries. Today, most Greeks are officially registered as members of the Greek Orthodox Church . Greeks have greatly influenced and contributed to culture, visual arts, exploration, theatre, literature, philosophy, ethics, politics, architecture, music, mathematics, medicine, science, technology, commerce, cuisine and sports. The Greek language

11952-637: The Eastern Mediterranean areas of ancient Greek colonization . The cultural centers of the Greeks have included Athens , Thessalonica , Alexandria , Smyrna , and Constantinople at various periods. In recent times, most ethnic Greeks live within the borders of the modern Greek state or in Cyprus. The Greek genocide and population exchange between Greece and Turkey nearly ended the three millennia-old Greek presence in Asia Minor. Other longstanding Greek populations can be found from southern Italy to

12118-545: The European cultural revolution, later called the Renaissance. In Greek-inhabited territory itself, Greeks came to play a leading role in the Ottoman Empire , due in part to the fact that the central hub of the empire, politically, culturally, and socially, was based on Western Thrace and Macedonia , both in Northern Greece , and of course was centred on the mainly Greek-populated, former Byzantine capital, Constantinople . As

12284-699: The Great Deluge of Deucalion , a land occupied by the Selloi and the "Greeks" who later came to be known as "Hellenes". In the Homeric tradition, the Selloi were the priests of Dodonian Zeus. In the Hesiodic Catalogue of Women , Graecus is presented as the son of Zeus and Pandora II , sister of Hellen the patriarch of the Hellenes. According to the Parian Chronicle , when Deucalion became king of Phthia,

12450-617: The Great's empire and successor states, Greek and Hellenizing ruling classes were established in the Middle East , India and in Egypt . The Hellenistic period is characterized by a new wave of Greek colonization that established Greek cities and kingdoms in Asia and Africa . Under the Roman Empire, easier movement of people spread Greeks across the Empire and in the eastern territories, Greek became

12616-473: The Greek enlightenment, the Greek expression of the Age of Enlightenment , contributed not only in the promotion of education, culture and printing among the Greeks, but also in the case of independence from the Ottomans , and the restoration of the term "Hellene". Adamantios Korais , probably the most important intellectual of the movement, advocated the use of the term "Hellene" (Έλληνας) or "Graikos" (Γραικός) in

12782-462: The Greek proper word and god for the sun, Helios . In particular, her marriage myth may be connected to a broader Indo-European "marriage drama" of the sun goddess, and she is related to the divine twins , just as many of these goddesses are. Martin L. West has thus proposed that Helena ("mistress of sunlight") may be constructed on the PIE suffix -nā ("mistress of"), connoting a deity controlling

12948-557: The Grim ( r.   1517–1520), whose mother Gülbahar Hatun was a Pontic Greek . The roots of Greek success in the Ottoman Empire can be traced to the Greek tradition of education and commerce exemplified in the Phanariotes . It was the wealth of the extensive merchant class that provided the material basis for the intellectual revival that was the prominent feature of Greek life in

13114-555: The Hellenes and that this name was given to those previously called Greeks ( Γραικοί ). In Greek mythology , Hellen , the patriarch of the Hellenes who ruled around Phthia, was the son of Pyrrha and Deucalion , the only survivors after the Great Deluge . The Greek philosopher Aristotle names ancient Hellas as an area in Epirus between Dodona and the Achelous river, the location of

13280-636: The Homeric tradition of ancient Greece. A distinct Greek identity re-emerged in the 11th century in educated circles and became more forceful after the fall of Constantinople to the Crusaders of the Fourth Crusade in 1204. In the Empire of Nicaea , a small circle of the elite used the term "Hellene" as a term of self-identification. For example, in a letter to Pope Gregory IX , the Nicaean emperor John III Doukas Vatatzes (r. 1221–1254) claimed to have received

13446-518: The Indo-Greek kingdoms lasted for a few more decades. This age saw the Greeks move towards larger cities and a reduction in the importance of the city-state. These larger cities were parts of the still larger Kingdoms of the Diadochi . Greeks, however, remained aware of their past, chiefly through the study of the works of Homer and the classical authors. An important factor in maintaining Greek identity

13612-696: The Middle Ages, the Byzantine Greeks self-identified as Rhōmaîoi ( Ῥωμαῖοι , "Romans", meaning citizens of the Roman Empire ), a term which in the Greek language had become synonymous with Christian Greeks. The Latinizing term Graikoí (Γραικοί, "Greeks") was also used, though its use was less common, and nonexistent in official Byzantine political correspondence, prior to the Fourth Crusade of 1204. The Eastern Roman Empire (today conventionally named

13778-516: The Mycenaean heritage that survived, the names of the gods and goddesses of Mycenaean Greece (e.g. Zeus , Poseidon and Hades ) became major figures of the Olympian Pantheon of later antiquity. The ethnogenesis of the Greek nation is linked to the development of Pan-Hellenism in the 8th century BC. According to some scholars, the foundational event was the Olympic Games in 776 BC, when

13944-496: The Nile at that time was called the Aëtus, or eagle, until Heracles stopped the flooding and corrected the river's course back to its original position. Diodorus claimed that the myth of Heracles slaying the eagle which ate the liver of Prometheus had its origins in this event, and that the city of Thonis stood where the Nile now emptied into the Mediterranean. Herodotus said that Paris and Helen of Troy , fleeing from Menelaus , landed in

14110-472: The Roman Empire. Despite their military superiority, the Romans admired and became heavily influenced by the achievements of Greek culture, hence Horace 's famous statement: Graecia capta ferum victorem cepit ("Greece, although captured, took its wild conqueror captive"). In the centuries following the Roman conquest of the Greek world, the Greek and Roman cultures merged into a single Greco-Roman culture. In

14276-500: The Spartan poet Alcman also said this, while the poet Lycophron 's use of the adjective "Pephnaian" ( Πεφναίας ) in association with Helen, suggests that Lycophron may have known a tradition which held that Helen was also born on the island. Two Athenians , Theseus and Pirithous , thought that since they were sons of gods, they should have divine wives; they thus pledged to help each other abduct two daughters of Zeus . Theseus chose Helen, and Pirithous vowed to marry Persephone ,

14442-637: The Trojan War. The Greek fleet gathered in Aulis , but the ships could not sail for lack of wind. Artemis was enraged by a sacrilege, and only the sacrifice of Agamemnon's daughter, Iphigenia , could appease her. In Euripides Iphigenia in Aulis , Clytemnestra, Iphigenia's mother and Helen's sister, begs her husband to reconsider his decision, calling Helen a "wicked woman". Clytemnestra tries to warn Agamemnon that sacrificing Iphigenia for Helen's sake is, " buying what we most detest with what we hold most dear ". Before

14608-559: The West during the 15th century, giving the Italian Renaissance a major boost. The Aristotelian philosophical tradition was nearly unbroken in the Greek world for almost two thousand years, until the Fall of Constantinople in 1453. To the Slavic world, the Byzantine Greeks contributed by the dissemination of literacy and Christianity. The most notable example of the later was the work of

14774-522: The best features from five virgins. The ancient world starts to paint Helen's picture or inscribe her form on stone, clay and bronze by the 7th century BC. Dares Phrygius describes Helen in his History of the Fall of Troy : "She was beautiful, ingenuous, and charming. Her legs were the best; her mouth the cutest. There was a beauty-mark between her eyebrows." Helen is frequently depicted on Athenian vases as being threatened by Menelaus and fleeing from him. This

14940-401: The central island of Heracleion was built succumbed to soil liquefaction . Earthquakes can also cause liquifaction, and earth tremors and tidal waves were reported by ancient historians during the time of Thonis-Heracleion's submersion. The soil around the south-eastern basin of the Mediterranean is prone to liquifaction. The hard clay turned rapidly into a liquid and the buildings collapsed into

15106-402: The chance to tarnish the city's remains. Thonis-Heracleion is mentioned by many Greek historians of antiquity, including Strabo , Diodorus , and Herodotus . These references to Thonis-Heracleion are often within the context of a story about legendary Greek figures, such as Heracles and Paris , and put the location of the city to be on the coast and adjacent to the Nile. Strabo wrote that in

15272-583: The city of Athens. Greeks from Cyprus have a similar history of emigration, usually to the English-speaking world because of the island's colonization by the British Empire . Waves of emigration followed the Turkish invasion of Cyprus in 1974, while the population decreased between mid-1974 and 1977 as a result of emigration, war losses, and a temporary decline in fertility. After the ethnic cleansing of

15438-822: The city's having continued to exist well after the 4th century. This discovery documents the settlement of Greek merchants and mercenaries in the city of Thonis-Heracleion. On 19 September 2023, the Institut Européen d'Archéologie Sous-Marine announced the discovery of the site of a temple to god Amun and a Greek sanctuary devoted to Aphrodite in the ancient port city of Thonis-Heracleion, together with many ancient Egyptian and Greek artifacts, including ancient Greek weapons. Greeks The Greeks or Hellenes ( / ˈ h ɛ l iː n z / ; Greek : Έλληνες , Éllines [ˈelines] ) are an ethnic group and nation native to Greece , Cyprus , southern Albania , Anatolia , parts of Italy and Egypt , and to

15604-472: The city, "had started to take root" there as early as during the Twenty-sixth Dynasty of Egypt and that likely Greek mercenaries were employed to defend it. During the second century BC Alexandria superseded Thonis-Heracleion as Egypt's primary port. The importance of Thonis-Heracleion began diminishing with the rise of Alexandria, which was about fifteen miles southwest, in the 2nd century BC. Also in

15770-450: The city, she feigned Bacchic rites , leading a chorus of Trojan women, and, holding a torch among them, she signaled to the Greeks from the city's central tower. In the Odyssey , however, Homer narrates a different story: Helen circled the Horse three times, and she imitated the voices of the Greek women left behind at home—she thus tortured the men inside (including Odysseus and Menelaus) with

15936-406: The country). Greek populations have not traditionally exhibited high rates of growth; a large percentage of Greek population growth since Greece's foundation in 1832 was attributed to annexation of new territories, as well as the influx of 1.5 million Greek refugees after the 1923 population exchange between Greece and Turkey. About 80% of the population of Greece is urban, with 28% concentrated in

16102-614: The creation of colonies and trade routes along the way. While the Alexandrian empire did not survive its creator's death intact, the cultural implications of the spread of Hellenism across much of the Middle East and Asia were to prove long lived as Greek became the lingua franca , a position it retained even in Roman times . Many Greeks settled in Hellenistic cities like Alexandria , Antioch and Seleucia . The Hellenistic civilization

16268-500: The decision was made, all the suitors should swear a most solemn oath to defend the chosen husband against whoever should quarrel with him. After the suitors had sworn not to retaliate, Menelaus was chosen to be Helen's husband. As a sign of the importance of the pact, Tyndareus sacrificed a horse . Helen and Menelaus became rulers of Sparta, after Tyndareus and Leda abdicated. Menelaus and Helen rule in Sparta for at least ten years; they have

16434-400: The descendants of Greeks and Romans. Before the establishment of the modern Greek nation-state, the link between ancient and modern Greeks was emphasized by the scholars of Greek Enlightenment especially by Rigas Feraios. In his "Political Constitution", he addresses to the nation as "the people descendant of the Greeks". The modern Greek state was created in 1829, when the Greeks liberated

16600-487: The distant past the city of Thonis, whose name derived from its king, had been located on a strip of land between the Mediterranean Sea and a canal leading towards the city of Schedia. Diodorus made mention of Thonis in relation to a story of Heracles, claiming that at one point the Nile river had become greatly inundated and flooded the area in which Prometheus was the governor. Due to the speed that its water flowed,

16766-698: The disturbances many set up home around the Mediterranean (notably Marseilles in France , Livorno in Italy , Alexandria in Egypt ), Russia ( Odesa and Saint Petersburg ), and Britain (London and Liverpool) from where they traded, typically in textiles and grain. Businesses frequently comprised the extended family, and with them they brought schools teaching Greek and the Greek Orthodox Church . As markets changed and they became more established, some families grew their operations to become shippers , financed through

16932-468: The dry air after a long submersion underwater. Numerous finds from the site have indicated that the city's period of major activity ran from the sixth to the fourth century BC, with finds of pottery and coins appearing to stop at the end of the second century BC. Goddio's finds have also included incomplete statues of the god Serapis and the queen Arsinoe II who became king. Maritime archaeologists have begun using 3D technologies more consistently due to

17098-521: The end of the war, the Trojans have come to hate her. When Hector dies, she is the third mourner at his funeral, and she says that, of all the Trojans, Hector and Priam alone were always kind to her: Wherefore I wail alike for thee and for my hapless self with grief at heart; for no longer have I anyone beside in broad Troy that is gentle to me or kind; but all men shudder at me. These bitter words reveal that Helen gradually realized Paris' weaknesses, and decided to ally herself with Hector. There

17264-511: The entire war in Egypt . An eidolon is also present in Stesichorus ' account, but not in Herodotus' rationalizing version of the myth. In addition to these accounts, Lycophron (822) states that Hesiod was the first to mention Helen's eidolon . This may mean Hesiod stated this in a literary work, or that the idea was widely known/circulated in early archaic Greece during the time of Hesiod and

17430-514: The excavation of a rare Ptolemaic galley . The 25-metre (82 ft) long galley featured classic mortise and tenon joints, alongside more Egyptian features, such as a flat-bottomed construction favourable for navigating the Nile and the Nile delta . This ancient war ship in the sunken city was trapped under heavy materials, such as stone, that fell from the crumbling buildings during the catastrophes that caused Thonis-Heracleion's destruction. The ship

17596-402: The favor of Tyndareus and his sons. Thus he won her fairly and took her away to Troia, with the full consent of her natural protectors. Cypria narrate that in just three days Paris and Helen reached Troy. Homer narrates that during a brief stop-over in the small island of Kranai , according to Iliad , the two lovers consummated their passion. On the other hand, Cypria note that this happened

17762-457: The finds. The team conducted dives at the site in a tightly coordinated schedule for about a month period in order to maximize their time there. They systematically uncovered various portions of the site during their allotted time frame. Goddio's team's policy is to leave the artifacts in place, unless they get permission from the proper authorities that the artifacts may be raised for conservation efforts or to safeguard their preservation. When there

17928-538: The first a Spartan goddess, connected to one or the other natural light phenomenon (especially St. Elmo's fire ) and sister of the Dioscuri , the other a vegetation goddess worshiped in Therapne as Ἑλένα Δενδρῖτις ("Helena of the Trees"). Others have connected the name's etymology to a hypothetical Proto-Indo-European sun goddess , noting the name's connection to the word for "sun" in various Indo-European cultures including

18094-578: The first and oldest written evidence of Greek . The Mycenaeans quickly penetrated the Aegean Sea and, by the 15th century BC, had reached Rhodes , Crete , Cyprus and the shores of Asia Minor . Around 1200 BC, the Dorians , another Greek-speaking people, followed from Epirus . Older historical research often proposed Dorian invasion caused the collapse of the Mycenaean civilization , but this narrative has been abandoned in all contemporary research. It

18260-453: The folly of Alexander. After Paris was killed in combat, there was some dispute among the Trojans about which of Priam's surviving sons she should remarry: Helenus or Deiphobus , but she was given to the latter. During the fall of Troy, Helen's role is ambiguous. In Virgil 's Aeneid , Deiphobus gives an account of Helen's treacherous stance: when the Trojan Horse was admitted into

18426-640: The fourth century B.C. Sanctuaries in Heracleion dedicated to Osiris and other deities were famous for miraculous healing and attracted pilgrims from a wide area. Archaeologists have found evidence of the celebration of the "Mysteries of Osiris " at Thonis-Heracleion, which occurred each year during the month of Khoiak. The god in his ceremonial boat was brought in procession from the temple of Amun in that city to his shrine in Canopus . 2023 archaeological findings, suggested that Greeks, who were already allowed to trade in

18592-452: The geographer (3.19.11–13), which has Helen share the afterlife with Achilles. Pausanias also has another story (3.19.9–10): "The account of the Rhodians is different. They say that when Menelaus was dead, and Orestes still a wanderer, Helen was driven out by Nicostratus and Megapenthes and came to Rhodes , where she had a friend in Polyxo , the wife of Tlepolemus . For Polyxo, they say,

18758-427: The gift of royalty from Constantine the Great, and put emphasis on his "Hellenic" descent, exalting the wisdom of the Greek people. After the Byzantines recaptured Constantinople, however, in 1261, Rhomaioi became again dominant as a term for self-description and there are few traces of Hellene (Έλληνας), such as in the writings of George Gemistos Plethon , who abandoned Christianity and in whose writings culminated

18924-556: The half century and more leading to the outbreak of the Greek War of Independence in 1821. Not coincidentally, on the eve of 1821, the three most important centres of Greek learning were situated in Chios , Smyrna and Aivali , all three major centres of Greek commerce. Greek success was also favoured by Greek domination in the leadership of the Eastern Orthodox church. The movement of

19090-484: The idea of a common Hellenism among the Greek tribes was first translated into a shared cultural experience and Hellenism was primarily a matter of common culture. The works of Homer (i.e. Iliad and Odyssey ) and Hesiod (i.e. Theogony ) were written in the 8th century BC, becoming the basis of the national religion, ethos, history and mythology. The Oracle of Apollo at Delphi was established in this period. The classical period of Greek civilization covers

19256-408: The large scale civil war between the two most powerful Greek city-states Athens and Sparta and their allies , left both greatly weakened. Most of the feuding Greek city-states were, in some scholars' opinions, united by force under the banner of Philip 's and Alexander the Great 's Pan-Hellenic ideals, though others might generally opt, rather, for an explanation of " Macedonian conquest for

19422-466: The later years of the Eastern Roman Empire, areas such as Ionia and Constantinople experienced a Hellenic revival in language, philosophy, and literature and on classical models of thought and scholarship. This revival provided a powerful impetus to the sense of cultural affinity with ancient Greece and its classical heritage. Throughout their history, the Greeks have retained their language and alphabet , certain values and cultural traditions, customs,

19588-697: The local Greek community, notably with the aid of the Ralli or Vagliano Brothers . With economic success, the Diaspora expanded further across the Levant , North Africa, India and the USA. In the 20th century, many Greeks left their traditional homelands for economic reasons resulting in large migrations from Greece and Cyprus to the United States , Great Britain , Australia , Canada , Germany , and South Africa , especially after

19754-429: The materials used in their construction. A statue of either Cleopatra II or Cleopatra III wearing the tunic of the goddess Isis was also discovered. A large, intact statue of the god Hapy was found at the site. He is depicted holding a tray of four loaves of bread. Many gold coins, statues of deities, jewelry, ritual animal sarcophagi, and ceramic pieces were uncovered at the site; these artifacts give archaeologists

19920-607: The memory of their loved ones, and brought them to the brink of destruction. After the deaths of Hector and Paris, Helen became the paramour of their younger brother, Deiphobus; but when the sack of Troy began, she hid her new husband's sword, and left him to the mercy of Menelaus and Odysseus. In Aeneid , Aeneas meets the mutilated Deiphobus in Hades ; his wounds serve as a testimony to his ignominious end, abetted by Helen's final act of treachery. However, Helen's portraits in Troy seem to contradict each other. From one side, we read about

20086-435: The mode of self-identification of the subjects of a multi-ethnic empire at least up to the 12th century, where the average subject identified as Roman; a perennialist approach, which views Romanity as the medieval expression of a continuously existing Greek nation; while a third view considers the eastern Roman identity as a pre-modern national identity. The Byzantine Greeks' essential values were drawn from both Christianity and

20252-458: The moon ( Selene ; Σελήνη ). But two early dedications to Helen in the Laconian dialect of ancient Greek spell her name with an initial digamma (Ϝ, probably pronounced like a w), which rules out any etymology originally starting with simple *s- . In the early 20th century, Émile Boisacq considered Ἑλένη to derive from the well-known noun ἑλένη meaning "torch". It has also been suggested that

20418-404: The most familiar account of Helen's birth: that, although her putative father was Tyndareus, she was actually Zeus' daughter. In the form of a swan, the king of gods was chased by an eagle, and sought refuge with Leda. The swan gained her affection, and the two mated. Leda then produced an egg , from which Helen emerged. The First Vatican Mythographer introduces the notion that two eggs came from

20584-475: The night before they left Sparta. At least three Ancient Greek authors denied that Helen ever went to Troy; instead, they suggested, Helen stayed in Egypt during the Trojan War. Those three authors are Euripides, Stesichorus, and Herodotus. In the version put forth by Euripides in his play Helen , Hera fashioned a likeness ( eidolon , εἴδωλον) of Helen out of clouds at Zeus' request, Hermes took her to Egypt, and Helen never went to Troy, but instead spent

20750-462: The number is closer to just below five million. Integration, intermarriage, and loss of the Greek language influence the self-identification of the Greek diaspora ( omogenia ). Important centres include New York City , Chicago , Boston , Los Angeles , Sydney , Melbourne , London , Toronto , Montreal , Vancouver , Auckland , and Sao Paulo . In 2010, the Hellenic Parliament introduced

20916-408: The oath precipitated the Trojan War. When she married Menelaus she was still very young; whether her subsequent departure with Paris was an abduction or an elopement is ambiguous (probably deliberately so). The legends of Helen during her time in Troy are contradictory: Homer depicts her ambivalently, both regretful of her choice and sly in her attempts to redeem her public image. Other accounts have

21082-444: The opening of hostilities, the Greeks dispatched a delegation to the Trojans under Odysseus and Menelaus; they endeavored without success to persuade Priam to hand Helen back. A popular theme, The Request of Helen (Helenes Apaitesis, Ἑλένης Ἀπαίτησις), was the subject of a drama by Sophocles , now lost. Homer paints a poignant, lonely picture of Helen in Troy. She is filled with self-loathing and regret for what she has caused; by

21248-514: The other hand, in the Cypria , part of the Epic Cycle , Helen was the daughter of Zeus and the goddess Nemesis . The date of the Cypria is uncertain, but it is generally thought to preserve traditions that date back to at least the 7th century BC. In the Cypria , Nemesis did not wish to mate with Zeus. She therefore changed shape into various animals as she attempted to flee Zeus, finally becoming

21414-459: The place of Romiós , that was seen negatively by him. The relationship between ethnic Greek identity and Greek Orthodox religion continued after the creation of the modern Greek nation-state in 1830. According to the second article of the first Greek constitution of 1822, a Greek was defined as any native Christian resident of the Kingdom of Greece , a clause removed by 1840. A century later, when

21580-543: The political heirs of imperial Rome , the descendants of their classical Greek forebears and followers of the Apostles ; during the mid-to-late Byzantine period (11th–13th century), a growing number of Byzantine Greek intellectuals deemed themselves Hellenes although for most Greek-speakers, "Hellene" still meant pagan. On the eve of the Fall of Constantinople the Last Emperor urged his soldiers to remember that they were

21746-446: The previous year. By comparison, about 9,000 Greeks emigrated to Germany in 2009 and 12,000 in 2010. Helen of Troy Helen ( Ancient Greek : Ἑλένη , romanized :  Helénē ), also known as Helen of Troy , Helen of Argos , or Helen of Sparta , and in Latin as Helena , was a figure in Greek mythology said to have been the most beautiful woman in the world. She

21912-524: The religious sphere, this was a period of profound change. The spiritual revolution that took place, saw a waning of the old Greek religion, whose decline beginning in the 3rd century BC continued with the introduction of new religious movements from the East. The cults of deities like Isis and Mithra were introduced into the Greek world. Greek-speaking communities of the Hellenized East were instrumental in

22078-706: The rest of the Balkan countries, the Levant and the Black Sea states, remnants of the Old Greek Diaspora (pre-19th century). The total number of Greeks living outside Greece and Cyprus today is a contentious issue. Where census figures are available, they show around three million Greeks outside Greece and Cyprus. Estimates provided by the SAE – World Council of Hellenes Abroad put the figure at around seven million worldwide. According to George Prevelakis of Sorbonne University ,

22244-530: The sake of conquest" or at least conquest for the sake of riches, glory and power and view the "ideal" as useful propaganda directed towards the city-states. In any case, Alexander's toppling of the Achaemenid Empire , after his victories at the battles of the Granicus , Issus and Gaugamela , and his advance as far as modern-day Pakistan and Tajikistan , provided an important outlet for Greek culture, via

22410-549: The same. The ruins submerged in the sea were located and are excavated by the French underwater archaeologist Franck Goddio and his team of the IEASM in collaboration with the Ministry for Antiquities of Egypt after a five-year search. Goddio and his team first researched the historical texts concerning the area and used that information to narrow down the possible location of the site. Then,

22576-592: The second-class status of Christians inherent in the Ottoman millet system, according to which Muslims were explicitly awarded senior status and preferential treatment. These Greeks either emigrated, particularly to their fellow Orthodox Christian protector, the Russian Empire , or simply converted to Islam, often only very superficially and whilst remaining crypto-Christian . The most notable examples of large-scale conversion to Turkish Islam among those today defined as Greek Muslims —excluding those who had to convert as

22742-681: The secular tendency in the interest in the classical past. However, it was the combination of Orthodox Christianity with a specifically Greek identity that shaped the Greeks' notion of themselves in the empire's twilight years. In the twilight years of the Byzantine Empire, prominent Byzantine personalities proposed referring to the Byzantine Emperor as the "Emperor of the Hellenes". These largely rhetorical expressions of Hellenic identity were confined within intellectual circles, but were continued by Byzantine intellectuals who participated in

22908-496: The southern part of the Eurotas valley seems to have been the center of Mycenaean Laconia. Helen and Menelaus had a daughter, Hermione . Different sources say she was also the mother of one or more sons, named Aethiolas , Nicostratus , Megapenthes and Pleisthenes . Still, according to others, these were instead illegitimate children of Menelaus and various lovers. Helen and Paris had three sons, Bunomus , Aganus , Idaeus , and

23074-420: The southern shore area of the Black Sea, contemporaneous with and following the failed Greek Asia Minor Campaign , was part of this process of Turkification of the Ottoman Empire and the placement of its economy and trade, then largely in Greek hands under ethnic Turkish control. The terms used to define Greekness have varied throughout history but were never limited or completely identified with membership to

23240-408: The spread of early Christianity in the 2nd and 3rd centuries, and Christianity's early leaders and writers (notably Saint Paul ) were generally Greek-speaking, though none were from Greece proper. However, Greece itself had a tendency to cling to paganism and was not one of the influential centers of early Christianity: in fact, some ancient Greek religious practices remained in vogue until the end of

23406-447: The team slowly began excavations. Several devices were used for the underwater excavations. The team used a grid reference system to document the exact positioning of the artifacts. They also created an excavation plan. The team labeled or tagged every artifact and documented its exact position. They used a water dredge to further uncover the artifacts. The team consisted of archaeologists, as well as artists and photographers to document

23572-409: The team used a combination of several pieces of technology, including non-intrusive cutting-edge technology, like a nuclear magnetic resonance magnetometer, multi-beam bathymetry, sidescan sonar, sub-bottom profiler and satellite positioning systems in order to map the site. These are relatively new technologies that were useful in the complex process of research and excavation. After the site was mapped,

23738-431: The treacherous Helen who simulated Bacchic rites and rejoiced over the carnage of Trojans. On the other hand, there is another Helen, lonely and helpless; desperate to find sanctuary, while Troy is on fire. Stesichorus narrates that both Greeks and Trojans gathered to stone her to death. When Menelaus finally found her, he raised his sword to kill her. He had demanded that only he should slay his unfaithful wife; but, when he

23904-512: The two Byzantine Greek brothers, the monks Saints Cyril and Methodius from the port city of Thessalonica , capital of the theme of Thessalonica , who are credited today with formalizing the first Slavic alphabet . Following the Fall of Constantinople on 29 May 1453, many Greeks sought better employment and education opportunities by leaving for the West , particularly Italy , Central Europe , Germany and Russia . Greeks are greatly credited for

24070-421: The two cities were actually the same city. Other important remains are the boats that were sunk around Thonis-Heracleion. There are around seventy ships near the city. This is the largest deposit of ships ever discovered in the ancient world. The massive number of ships gives great resources to nautical archaeologists in terms of researching various aspects of the ships, such as the style in which they were built and

24236-413: The union: one containing Castor and Pollux ; one with Helen and Clytemnestra . Nevertheless, the same author earlier states that Helen, Castor and Pollux were produced from a single egg. Fabius Planciades Fulgentius also states that Helen, Castor and Pollux are born from the same egg. Pseudo-Apollodorus states that Leda had intercourse with both Zeus and Tyndareus the night she conceived Helen. On

24402-462: The water. A few residents stayed on during the Roman era and the beginning of Arab rule, but by the end of the eighth century AD, what was left of Thonis had sunk beneath the sea. Thonis-Heracleion was left relatively undisturbed beneath the sea floor for 1200 years. The sand and other debris covered the remains of the city and made accidental discovery unlikely. This kept Thonis-Heracleion preserved. Looters and unsuspecting humans and animals did not have

24568-558: The wife of Hades . Theseus took Helen and left her with his mother Aethra or his associate Aphidnus at Aphidnae or Athens . Theseus and Pirithous then traveled to the underworld , the domain of Hades, to kidnap Persephone. Hades pretended to offer them hospitality and set a feast, but, as soon as the pair sat down, snakes coiled around their feet and held them there. Helen's abduction caused an invasion of Athens by Castor and Pollux, who captured Aethra in revenge, and returned their sister to Sparta. In Goethe 's Faust , Centaur Chiron

24734-539: The wrath of Athena and Hera . Although Helen is sometimes depicted as being raped (i.e. abducted ) by Paris, Ancient Greek sources are often elliptical and contradictory. Herodotus states that Helen was abducted, but the Cypria simply mentions that after giving Helen gifts, "Aphrodite brings the Spartan queen together with the Prince of Troy." Sappho argues that Helen willingly left behind Menelaus and their nine-year-old daughter, Hermione , to be with Paris: Some say

24900-479: The λ of Ἑλένη arose from an original ν, and thus the etymology of the name would be connected with the root of Venus . Linda Lee Clader, however, says that none of the above suggestions offers much satisfaction. More recently, Otto Skutsch has advanced the theory that the name Helen might have two separate etymologies, which belong to different mythological figures respectively, namely *Sṷelenā (related to Sanskrit svaraṇā "the shining one") and *Selenā ,

25066-405: The “improvement of a suite of sonar, laser, optical and other sensor-based technologies capable of capturing terrestrial, intertidal, seabed and sub-seabed sediments in 3D and in high resolution”. These technologies allow the archaeologists to scan the sites and create accurate, precise maps and images of the site. This is especially useful because the site is submerged underwater. From 2009 to 2011

25232-507: Was a cause to raise an artifact from the water, the team tagged it, and placed it within a plastic bag and then raised the artifact to the surface in a basket. However, if the artifact was too large, such as the various statues, the team used a crane from on board their ship, the Princess Duda, to carefully raise the artifact. Once on the ship, the artifacts were cleaned and then went through a desalination process in order to protect them from

25398-460: Was afraid to select a husband for his daughter, or send any of the suitors away, for fear of offending them and giving grounds for a quarrel. Odysseus was one of the suitors, but had brought no gifts because he believed he had little chance to win the contest. He thus promised to solve the problem, if Tyndareus in turn would support him in his courting of Penelope , the daughter of Icarius . Tyndareus readily agreed, and Odysseus proposed that, before

25564-441: Was an emporion (trading port) and by the Late Period it was the country's main port for international trade and collection of taxes. It had a sister city, Naucratis , which was another trading port lying 72 km (45 mi) farther up the Nile. Goods were transferred inland via Naucratis, or they were transported via the Western Lake and through a water channel to the nearby town of Canopus for onward distribution. Thonis had

25730-409: Was an Argive by descent, and when she was already married to Tlepolemus, shared his flight to Rhodes. At the time she was queen of the island, having been left with an orphan boy. They say that this Polyxo desired to avenge the death of Tlepolemus on Helen, now that she had her in her power. So she sent against her when she was bathing handmaidens dressed up as Furies , who seized Helen and hanged her on

25896-430: Was another popular motif in ancient Greek vase-painting ; definitely more popular than the kidnapping by Theseus. In a famous representation by the Athenian vase painter Makron , Helen follows Paris like a bride following a bridegroom, her wrist grasped by Paris' hand. The Etruscans , who had a sophisticated knowledge of Greek mythology, demonstrated a particular interest in the theme of the delivery of Helen's egg, which

26062-442: Was believed that Menelaus and Helen had stayed there, accommodated by the noble Egyptian Thon and his wife Polydamna . The second century BC Greek poet Nicander wrote that Menelaus's helmsman, Canopus, was bitten by a viper on the sands of Thonis. Until very recently the site had been known only from a few literary and epigraphic sources, one of which interestingly mentions the site as an emporion , just like Naukratis. Heracleion

26228-521: Was believed to have been the daughter of Zeus and Leda or Nemesis , and the sister of Clytemnestra , Castor, Pollux , Philonoe , Phoebe and Timandra . She was married to King Menelaus of Sparta "who became by her the father of Hermione , and, according to others, of Nicostratus also." Her abduction by Paris of Troy was the most immediate cause of the Trojan War . Elements of her putative biography come from classical authors such as Aristophanes , Cicero , Euripides , and Homer (in both

26394-584: Was consequently attributed to him. Herodotus adds weight to the "Egyptian" version of events by putting forward his own evidence—he traveled to Egypt and interviewed the priests of the temple ( Foreign Aphrodite , ξείνη Ἀφροδίτη) at Memphis . According to these priests, Helen had arrived in Egypt shortly after leaving Sparta, because strong winds had blown Paris's ship off course. King Proteus of Egypt , appalled that Paris had seduced his host's wife and plundered his host's home in Sparta, disallowed Paris from taking Helen to Troy. Paris returned to Troy without

26560-403: Was contact with barbarian (non-Greek) peoples, which was deepened in the new cosmopolitan environment of the multi-ethnic Hellenistic kingdoms. This led to a strong desire among Greeks to organize the transmission of the Hellenic paideia to the next generation. Greek science, technology and mathematics are generally considered to have reached their peak during the Hellenistic period. In

26726-416: Was discernible. The Greeks of classical antiquity idealized their Mycenaean ancestors and the Mycenaean period as a glorious era of heroes, closeness of the gods and material wealth. The Homeric Epics (i.e. Iliad and Odyssey ) were especially and generally accepted as part of the Greek past and it was not until the time of Euhemerism that scholars began to question Homer's historicity. As part of

26892-411: Was harbored near the Temple of Amun, and it was held in place on the ocean floor by the heavy building materials until its discovery. It is a Greek war ship with a sail and oars, and it was constructed using Egyptian elements, as well. It brings new knowledge to light about the combined shipbuilding efforts of the Egyptians and the Greeks living at Thonis-Heracleion, which had a high Greek population. Also,

27058-411: Was killed by Heracles. Tlepolemus was killed by Sarpedon on the first day of fighting in the Iliad . Nicostratus was a son of Menelaus by his concubine Pieris, an Aetolian slave. Megapenthes was a son of Menelaus by his concubine Tereis, with no further origin. In Euripides 's tragedy The Trojan Women , Helen is shunned by the women who survived the war and is to be taken back to Greece to face

27224-435: Was ready to do so, she dropped her robe from her shoulders, and the sight of her beauty caused him to let the sword drop from his hand. Electra wails: Alas for my troubles! Can it be that her beauty has blunted their swords? Helen returned to Sparta and lived with Menelaus, where she was encountered by Telemachus in Book 4 of The Odyssey . As depicted in that account, she and Menelaus were completely reconciled and had

27390-412: Was the next period of Greek civilization, the beginnings of which are usually placed at Alexander's death. This Hellenistic age , so called because it saw the partial Hellenization of many non-Greek cultures, extending all the way into India and Bactria , both of which maintained Greek cultures and governments for centuries. The end is often placed around conquest of Egypt by Rome in 30 BC, although

27556-429: Was time for Helen to marry, many kings and princes from around the world came to seek her hand, bringing rich gifts with them or sent emissaries to do so on their behalf. During the contest, Castor and Pollux had a prominent role in dealing with the suitors, although the final decision was in the hands of Tyndareus. Menelaus, her future husband, did not attend but sent his brother, Agamemnon , to represent him. Tyndareus

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