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56-429: The megaron ( / ˈ m ɛ ɡ ə ˌ r ɒ n / ; Ancient Greek : μέγαρον , [mégaron] , pl. : megara / ˈ m ɛ ɡ ər ə / ) was the great hall in very early Mycenean and ancient Greek palace complexes. Architecturally, it was a rectangular hall that was supported by four columns, fronted by an open, two-columned portico , and had a central, open hearth that vented though an oculus in

112-537: 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

168-585: A common zoomorphic motif in Mycenaean vase painting, appear on Greek megaron frescoes, such as the one in the Pylos megaron , where a bull is depicted at the center of a Mycenaean procession. Other famous megara include the ones at the Mycenaean palaces of Thebes and Mycenae . Different Greek cultures had their own unique megara ; for example, the people of the Greek mainland tended to separate their central megaron from

224-472: 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

280-420: A larger length than width are similar structurally to early Doric temples. The construction of the megaron style structure differs depending on the location and the specific example. Recent excavations of the small town of Karataş , Turkey, has led to the discovery of structural evidence that survived the ages, allowing archeologists and scholars to piece together theories as to how they were created. Some of

336-419: 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

392-415: A number of ethnic groups participated in creating the original and archetypal model which later evolved into the classical Greek megaron structure. The Greek megaron style building was initially structurally designed to allow for religious ceremonies to be held in the central room of the building, while the other rooms supported residence dwelling. However, during the eighth century BC, the base layout of

448-543: 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

504-671: 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 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

560-609: A standard subject of study in educational institutions of the Western world since the Renaissance . This article primarily contains information about 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

616-510: 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

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672-556: 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

728-418: 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

784-644: 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

840-448: 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

896-399: Is more evidence towards a pitched or gabled design. A lot of these theories have gained popularity and are widely accepted in the effort to reconstruct the ancient megaron ; however, some scholars such as Carl W. Blegen have argued that both the arguments presented by the lead supporters for the pitched and gabled roofs (Smith and Dinsmoor) provide insufficient evidence for determining what

952-698: 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

1008-509: The Neolithic Era . Müller asserts that these are some of the first known megaron , classifying them with the designation "Type 1" megarons . These initial structures were somewhat similar in design to those found in ancient Greece, but different in their material and roofing style and complexity. Müller has classified and archived a number of megaron "typing's" which existed through the first, second and third periods of history, and shows how

1064-527: The UK , the temple-front applied to The Vyne , Hampshire, was the first portico applied to an English country house . A pronaos ( UK : / p r oʊ ˈ n eɪ . ɒ s / or US : / p r oʊ ˈ n eɪ . ə s / ) is the inner area of the portico of a Greek or Roman temple , situated between the portico's colonnade or walls and the entrance to the cella , or shrine. Roman temples commonly had an open pronaos, usually with only columns and no walls, and

1120-415: The ancient Romans . Roman taste favoured narrow pseudoperipteral and amphiprostyle buildings with tall columns, raised on podiums for the added pomp and grandeur conferred by considerable height. The Maison Carrée at Nîmes , France , is the best-preserved Roman hexastyle temple surviving from antiquity . Octastyle buildings had eight columns; they were considerably rarer than the hexastyle ones in

1176-687: The archaic period 600–550 BCE up to the Age of Pericles 450–430 BCE. Some well-known examples of classical Doric hexastyle Greek temples : Hexastyle was also applied to Ionic temples, such as the prostyle porch of the sanctuary of Athena on the Erechtheum , at the Acropolis of Athens . With the colonization by the Greeks of Southern Italy , hexastyle was adopted by the Etruscans and subsequently acquired by

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1232-606: The megaroid , or large hall-centered rectangular building, of mainland Greece dating back to the Late Neolithic and Early Bronze Age . Furthermore, it served as the architectural precursor to the Greek temples of the Archaic and Classical periods. With respect to its structural layout, the megaron includes a columned entrance, a pronaos and a central naos ("cella") with early versions of it having one of many roof types (i.e., pitched, flat, barrel). The roof, specifically,

1288-403: The megaron could be assembled. In other instances, the inner wood-work of the foundation was held in place with soil and rock, rather than mudbrick. Archeologist are unsure whether to call this a pure "Wattle-and-Daub" technique, or rather Pisé, as there is no indication that the inner saplings were woven together in order to help keep the wall's shape, or if the walls were rather held together by

1344-488: The megaron evolved into what is understood to be the traditional structural design: where the central configuration of the building became more strictly associated with worship. The inhabited sections of the structure grew as a subsidiary structure from the traditional megaron design, and became what was later known as an oikos in ancient Greece . Rectilinear halls were a characteristic theme of ancient Greek architecture. The Mycenaean megaron originated and evolved from

1400-501: 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)

1456-722: The prostyle entrance porticos of large public buildings like the Basilica of Maxentius and Constantine . Roman provincial capitals also manifested tetrastyle construction, such as the Capitoline Temple in Volubilis . The North Portico of the White House is perhaps the most notable four-columned portico in the United States. Hexastyle buildings had six columns and were the standard façade in canonical Greek Doric architecture between

1512-1031: 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"):

1568-490: 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

1624-543: 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,   Portico Porticos are sometimes topped with pediments . Palladio was a pioneer of using temple-fronts for secular buildings. In

1680-439: The Greek megaron style building, as they are similarly defined by their design as a "long room" where two parallel walls of the structure are equal in length to each other, and longer than the other two walls. Refer to "Fig 1 – Types of Megera with Dates" for a full list of megaron types as determined by Müller. Ancient Greek language Ancient Greek ( Ἑλληνῐκή , Hellēnikḗ ; [hellɛːnikɛ́ː] ) includes

1736-429: The actual roofing might have looked like and asserts that more pertinent studies need to be done before any conclusive judgements can be made. As it stands, conceptualization of the megaron style roofing rendered an overall inconclusive understanding among the archeological community and has led to nothing but speculation. A famous megaron is in the large reception hall of the king in the Bronze Age palace of Tiryns ,

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1792-550: 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

1848-419: 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

1904-438: 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

1960-785: The classical Greek architectural canon . The best-known octastyle buildings surviving from antiquity are the Parthenon in Athens , built during the Age of Pericles (450–430 BCE), and the Pantheon in Rome (125 CE). The destroyed Temple of Divus Augustus in Rome, the centre of the Augustan cult, is shown on Roman coins of the 2nd century CE as having been built in octastyle. The decastyle has ten columns; as in

2016-422: The construction techniques of " Wattle-and-Daub " and " Pisé ". The megaron is thought to have been used for sacrificial processions, as well as for royal functions and court meetings. However, parts of the megaron functioned as habitable spaces, and were utilized as living quarters prior to the eighth century BC. Numerous sources indicate that the megaron was used in two central ways: first and foremost, it

2072-611: 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

2128-429: The digging site, and even a supposition of the block's use – possibly the remnants of a fallen abacus from the porch of the megaron . The carved fragment of the megaron which he recovered was reportedly "broken into more than forty fragments", and was made from what he assumed to be a sort of reddish sandstone . This archeological fragment is particularly revealing of the history of the megaron of Mycenae, as much of

2184-614: 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 ), 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

2240-556: 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

2296-472: 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

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2352-600: The main room of which had a raised throne placed against the right wall and a central hearth bordered by four Minoan-style wooden columns that served as supports for the roof. The Cretan elements in the Tiryns megaron were adopted by the Mycenaeans from the palace type found in Minoan architecture . Frescoes from Pylos show figures eating and drinking, which were important activities in Greek culture . Artistic portrayals of bulls,

2408-495: The most prominent theories to come from this unearthing are the " Wattle-and-Daub " and " Pisé " construction techniques. In the ancient remains of the Karataş houses, archeologists analyzed the surviving foundations and walls of the megaron framework and observed that within each brick foundation were tightly packed tree saplings. The mudbrick surrounding these saplings provided for a dense and well taught structural foundation in which

2464-499: 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

2520-464: The other rooms whereas the Cretans did not do this. Notable information about the megaron of Mycenae has been reported by archeologist Hugh Plommer on his findings of a fully intact carved block from the megaron of Mycenae. His publication notes specific in situ measurements, photographs, physical details and descriptions of the stone left behind, along with a brief history of what had happened to

2576-487: 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

2632-431: The position of their entrances, which are always along the shorter wall so that the depth of the space is larger than the width. There were often many rooms around the central megaron , such as archive rooms, offices, oil-press rooms, workshops, potteries, shrines , corridors, armories , and storerooms for such goods as wine , oil and wheat . Evidence suggests that the megara of ancient Greece were often created using

2688-442: The pronaos could be as long as the cella . The word pronaos ( πρόναος ) is Greek for "before a temple". In Latin , a pronaos is also referred to as an anticum or prodomus . The pronaos of a Greek and Roman temple is typically topped with a pediment. The different variants of porticos are named by the number of columns they have. The "style" suffix comes from the Greek στῦλος , "column". In Greek and Roman architecture,

2744-519: The pronaos of a temple is typically topped with a pediment . The tetrastyle has four columns; it was commonly employed by the Greeks and the Etruscans for small structures such as public buildings and amphiprostyles . The Romans favoured the four columned portico for their pseudoperipteral temples like the Temple of Portunus , and for amphiprostyle temples such as the Temple of Venus and Roma , and for

2800-541: The roof. The megaron also contained the throne-room of the wanax , or Mycenaean ruler, whose throne was located in the main room with the central hearth. Similar architecture is found in the Ancient Near East , though the presence of the open portico , generally supported by columns, is particular to the Aegean . Megara are sometimes referred to as "long-rooms", as defined by their rectangular (non-square) shape and

2856-577: The stone was also reportedly blackened around its edges, indicating that at some point there was a fire which raged through the building. After much archeological analysis, Plommer concluded that the abacus of the megaron was likely "80 cm" in both length and width, creating a solid square base linking the roof to the supporting pillar. One source written by Valentin Müller claims that there are 32 recorded types of megaron found throughout Greece and parts of Europe. These structures are understood as variations of

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2912-452: The surrounding mud, as done in typical Pisé fashion. There are a number of different theories about the architectural design of megaron roofing; consequently there is much contention as to what type of roofing was actually used in ancient Greece . Some scholars suggest that the traditional megaron roof was flat , while others, prominently Baldwin Smith and Dinsmoor respectively, believe there

2968-517: 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

3024-475: 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 ,

3080-567: Was supported by wooden beams and since the aforesaid roof types are always destroyed in the remnants of the early megaron , the definite roof type is unknown. The floor was made of patterned concrete and covered in carpet. The walls, constructed out of mudbrick , were decorated with fresco paintings. There were wood-ornamented metal doors, often two-leaved, and footbaths were also used in the megaron as attested in Homer's Odyssey where Odysseus's feet were washed by Eurycleia . The proportions involving

3136-520: Was used for religious ceremonies, while also being used to support residents as a dwelling space. Additionally, according to Valentin Müller, there is evidence for 32 different types of megaron throughout Greece and parts of Europe and Russia. Their use varied significantly depending on the time periods and locations in which they were built. Remnants of structures related to the traditional Greek megaron style buildings can be found in Thessaly dating back to

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