From: cla04@seq1.keele.ac.uk (A.T. Fear)
Newsgroups: soc.culture.greek
Subject: Re: Confusions...
Date: 14 Sep 92 20:36:26 GMT
Organization: Keele University, England

From article <14SEP199212590347@scsuc.ctstateu.edu>, by karageorgiou@scsuc.ctstateu.edu (Voodoo Man : member XMAK):
 
> 	Question that comes to mind is , after Alexander the Great conquered
> Asia, the language that was spoken was "KOINI" which was a simplified
> version of Classic/Greek.

This is partially true, but don't forget that large amounts of
Hellenistic Asia continued to use Aramaic as a lingua franca too. I'm
not sure how this bears on the question at issue though.

 By defualt hte language that a conquering army
> speaks is not that of the adjutant scholars ( Only a Greek army ever had those
> :-) but that of the average foot soldier. Does this mean that the average
> foot soldier of the Macedonian army spoke Greek?

Well it depends which bit of the army you mean, there seems to have been
a sharp distinction in Alexander's army between the Greek part and the
Macedonian part. Of course understanding a language and speaking it are
rather different things. No doubt Greek was intelligible to the vast
majority of Macedonian soldiers, but this doesn't mean it was their
native tongue. All members of the French Foreign Legion can speak
French, but this tells us nothing about their ethnic background.

> Of course it does, if it wasn't
> the case then there would be neither communication nor a Hellinistic period

I hope this isn't implying that Greek was uniformly spoken across Asia
in the Hellenistic period and that it was the only lingua franca of the time, because it wasn't. Aramaic was also in common
use. Communication can take place on several levels and in several
languages. In this the Hellenistic Empires were different from the
Roman, or for that matter the British Empire. An interesting piece on
the reception of Greek Culture in Asia was writing by Fergus Millar in
Proc. Cambridge Philological Society 209 (1983) I commend it to you. 


> 	What about the Greeks of constantinopolis that brought the ancient
> teachings to Europe and caused the Rennaissance? Will you say something
> about those too?

Not too keen on saying a lot about periods I don't know much about, but I
would suggest that Byzantium contain a synthesis of Roman and Greek
culture rather than being a simple continuation of Greek culture, after
all the Byzantines styled themselves Rhomaioi not Hellenes. Also of
course the Arabs had a fair bit to do with the transmission of aspects
of classical Greek culture too. 


> As for the name of the Skopjeans. They came to the region at the
> 6th century A.D. Even if the ancient Macedonians were not Greek which of
> course is not the case. These people have no right or claim to this name. 

Well the English arrived in Britain (celtic name) at about the same
time, yet we think we have a fairly good claim on the name, and I
suspect this is a pretty widespread view elsewhere too.


> 	As for the Greekiness of the Macedonians how come they all had 
> Greek names? Yet something else to chew upon.


As most English Christian names are Greek or Jewish does this make most
Englishmen Greeks or Jews? I think not.


Andy
Newsgroups: soc.culture.greek,soc.culture.europe,rec.arts.poems